Church

My pastor has a pretty good grasp on the English language, and for some reason, he likes to use it a lot in his sermons.  I would estimate that about 25% of what he says is in English pretty much every single time he takes the stage. You can count on it.

Now, my church has a very wide demographic. There are extremely old people, and there are hordes of babies. One of the wealthiest families in town goes to my church, as do several families who live in the closest thing my town has to a slum. We have doctors, and we have people who never learned how to read or write. We have people from at least 15 different tribes/islands. But there are only two white people - me being one of them. And both of us speak Indonesian. So there's really no need to use English at all.

A few people from my church have a very basic grasp of English - mostly students who have learned it in school. Even fewer have a very excellent grasp of English, one being an English teacher himself. But other than that handful, nobody understands what is being said when the pastor uses English. And sometimes it frustrates me when he uses English because I know I'm part of only a select group that understands the ENTIRE sermon.

Today was a funny example of that. After the sermon, pastor asked everyone to stand up for prayer. But for some reason, he said it in English. Aswan, who speaks fairly good English, jumped right up. I started to, but then I realized that with the exception of Aswan, NOBODY was standing. He looked around, embarrassed to be the only person in the whole room standing up, and then he whispered to me, "Why is nobody moving?" I whispered back, "Because he said it in English and nobody understood him. Sit down."

So he did.

Aaaaand now that I'm writing it, it seems way less funny than it did at the time. There's a chance I may have had to stifle my laughter during the closing prayer...