Adventist Tradition

       Week of Prayer ended today. The theme for this week was ‘Jesus is coming…are you ready?’ It was an interesting week. A visiting pastor and his wife were the speakers. The meetings were definitely geared towards the adults although the children had to sit through them as well. There were meetings in both the morning and the evening. The morning meetings started at 7:30am and typically seemed to go until about 8:50am although they were only supposed to go until 8:30am. Twenty minutes may not seem like that long for a speaker to go over, but the children have school, so the later they went the more time was taken out of the school day. The meetings were interesting; they very much had a fire and brimstone quality. They were also mainly in Bangla with an English sentence thrown in every once in a while; it made it an interesting experience!

       Today was communion and footwashing. This summer I worked at camp where this was the station that I worked at on Sabbath; because of this I think it lost some of its meaning, but I think today helped remind me. After a long sermon that was on Nebuchadnezzar’s statue I think, the children changed and the adults went outside to wash feet. I felt very humbled when an older Bengali lady asked, well motioned, if she could wash my feet. I washed her feet in return and then she gave me a hug and then touched my feet then head which is a sign of respect here I think. We then went our separate ways, me to take pictures of Lauren’s footwashing experience and her…I’m not sure where she went. Here the women and men totally separate, spouses don’t even wash each other’s feet. It reminded me of when I was little and the women were at the front of the church and the men at the back, I think. After everyone was done with footwashing communion started. There were seven people up front, five men and two women. The women turned out to only be there to remove the cloth covering the bread and juice. I have to say, I think that communion bread tastes better in America than here; here it is more white, it’s not bad, but just not quite as tasty. The juice we got was white and we weren’t quite sure what it was, it did not taste like grape juice. We found out later that it was raisin juice, although I have no idea how to make it!

       Today was overall a very good day and a good reminder of why communion and footwashing takes place. What they symbolize and are supposed to remind us of...Jesus' sacrifice and being like Him.