Usually when I go to Easter Sunday service, I've gone through a very
sad, dark Good Friday service and then you have the dichotomy of a
bright early morning Easter Service. Well, they do it a little bit
differently in PNG. Good Friday is just as the name implies. There are
hallelujahs all over the place and it's a pretty upbeat worship
service. Then you have an even more joyful Easter Service.
The church we went to had some lapun women that sang an old style PNG
song during the service. The style of these songs is that one person
starts out in a kind of chanting voice that is the verse of the song,
then a few more people join in with the first part of the chorus,
followed by a few more. Soon they're all singing different notes and
pitches that individually would be very harsh, but together it somehow
works. The most interesting part for me is at the end of the chorus,
they suddenly go up together and fall off quickly into silence. It
always sounds like "Owwwwaaaahhhhhh--" to me... but since they were
singing in Enga, I have no idea what they were saying.
After the singing all the kids in the congregation got up and went
outside. In a few minutes they all came back in and went to the front
and gave several people Easter Eggs. Since we're the white-skins,
everywhere we go we're the center of attention, so we each got one as
well as the newly graduated Pastors and praise team and leaders of the
community. It was really nice to get an Easter Egg. And a really
unique Easter Sunday.
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