First School Mass (Written 2/21/06)

The Archbishop at the School's Mass

Today we had the first official school mass of the school year. Our speaker for today was the Archbishop of Samoa who is also a past student of Chanel College. The mass took place in the school falesamoa (my front porch) so students and teachers worked late last night to get the fale ready for the mass today. It was decorated quite nicely and looked different from it’s regular drab concrete look. The mass itself took up the first half of the morning (it started at 8:30 when it usually takes place at 11am) so we were done by our regular school tea break time. It felt like a traditional catholic church mass without the traditional church structure which was pretty nice – God’s church doesn’t need a traditional building. It was also interesting because they gave communion at this mass (only the bread, no wine/juice) which is only the second time I’ve had communion in Samoa – apparently, it’s not done a lot here. The service was in Samoan so I didn’t understand a lot of what was said but I got the basic gist of it and there were parts that were just like a ‘normal’ service back home so I knew what words they were saying even if I didn’t know specifically what they were saying. Afterwards, we had an hour break where the teachers and the newly elected Head Boys/Head Girls/Prefects (yes, they really do exist – they’re not just in the Potter books) got to eat and talk to the archbishop which was pretty nice. The kids were of course very shy around him and kept their distance but they got a free meal out of it – so it all works in the end. Father Kevin also showed him our computer labs and told him we were working on having 3 labs total – he was very impressed.

From what I heard, when we usually have a mass like this we get the rest of the day off but because of the rain a few weeks back and the fact that the mass was so early in the morning – we continued with classes after the tea break. So I only had 3 classes today. Today was definitely a good day of seeing another type of church service in Samoa – even though we didn’t get the day off. Ah well…Easter Break’s coming up soon! L8r.