Sunday morning I awoke at 6:00am to prepare for my host brother’s first communion service being held in the central Catholic church of town. Only my host father, Abrahm, and myself attended the service since Tina had to care for the baby and the twins had confirmation class during the service time. The three of us piled into the two person truck cab with Abrahm sitting on my lap all dressed in white as we bounced down the dirt and cobble stone roads to the church.
The communion class had nearly 200 students and the church became very crowded as the service began. I had never before attended any form of a service at a Catholic Church and I was interested to see how much I could follow of the Spanish and how similar the service structure would be to the Lutheran church. All the boys and girls were dressed completely in white robes and shirts, and the girls had a small flower or bead wreath placed in their hair. The students walked in with their parents and were placed in one of the front pews for the service divided by the middle aisle into boys and girls. The average age of the students was around 10, but some appeared to be younger and older.
The focus of most of the service was of course about the body and blood of Jesus Christ and how it is represented for us at church through bread and wine. The priest, or sacerdote, gave a sermon and I understood a good 20% of what he was saying so I thought I did quite well. During the prayers, the students held lit candles while their peers read off the prayers for the day. The peace of the day was passed, offering was taken and songs were sung. It felt very much like a normal Lutheran service expect I couldn’t understand much and most people stared at me to see if I knew what I was supposed to do.
The big moment finally came for the students at the end of the service when they were ushered forward to receive their first communion. This took almost 45 minutes to get through all the students. Once all the students had gone forward, time was taken to pass bread out to all the students and parents in the church to take home to share with their friends and family not in attendance that morning. I laughed to myself a good amount as I watched lots of the students and parents start eating their bread before they had even left the church. I guess they wanted even more communion that day for all the time they had spent in class. The service took a little over two hours and most of the parents and I stood the entire service. I am glad I never wear high heels to church.
After the service Abrahm collected his certificated and passed out small communion cards to friends that stated he had received this first communion this morning. He was nice enough to give me one. They were quite silly since they had a drawing of a blonde haired pale skin boy praying and Abrahm looks nothing like the drawing, but I will hold onto it until I return to the states.
To end the morning Abahm and I both got a type of doughnut from a vendor in the plaza to celebrate his communion and to quench our hunger from being awake for 4 hours without food. The doughnut definitely put a close to the experience that made me feel like I was at church back in the states with friends and family. I always said that church makes people joyful and fat at the same time.
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