Saturday, April 14, 2007

Mormon New Year

To celebrate April 6, the date of both the Church's founding and Jesus' birthday, and therefore an important day in the Mormon ecclesiastical calendar--if, that is, we had one--the branch in Semarang gathered together for a small commemorative activity. The program was fairly standard, as Church things go: we sang some hymns, heard a "spiritual thought," and watched various "spontaneous performances," meaning, mostly, listening to our district president sing love songs from the 1940s.

After the closing hymn, one sister brought an Indonesian dish, yellow rice shaped into a tall cone, that's used for special occasions like births, deaths, marriages, and circucisions. Standing around the yellow rice cone, we sang "Happy Birthday" to the Church, and the branch president invited the "oldest" member of the branch--the one who had been a member the longest--to cut the yellow rice cone and eat the first serving. Before we ate, we all held up our plates of yellow rice and said, by way of a toast, "Endure to the end!"

Why can't all church activities be like that?

6 comments:

Th. said...

.

That does sound pretty nice....

Tolkien Boy said...

I'm having the worst trouble finding where the comment button is...

Apparently, though, I have arrived.

And it's all to say that the image of you holding your cone of yellow rice aloftjavascript:void(0)
Publish Your Comment and shouting "Endure to the end" will no doubt linger with me for ages, and be a strength to me in times of despair.

alea said...

Oh, did I tell you my friends and I also toasted (with vegan cupcakes). The call was "endure to the end". The response was "Next year in Zion". And by Zion, we naturally mean Jackson Co.

Katie said...

In the words of my mother, this story "makes my little heart go pitter-pat."

(it sounds sarcastic, but I'm totally serious!)

Melyngoch said...

They can be like that. You just need to be the prophet.

Anonymous said...

Did Petra turn so red during her sojourn in Bali that she can no longer indulge her loyal readers with her purple prose. We miss readings. Update, update!!!