Sunday

We celebrated the Lord's Day by going to a number of services. Most of us went to Carey Baptist Church, where we received a warm welcome. We went to the English speaking service rather than Hindi or Bengali and enjoyed joining the worship. It was English in style too with songs we knew and would be familiar to most English Baptists. It worked in this setting, the congregation were middle class and there seems to be a leaning towards western ways which appears common where there is more wealth.

Their youth group led worship very well but in their exuberance had installed a new PA system the night before. The sound engineers spent most of the service fixing problems. Half way through the sermon the system started picking up FM radio but respect to the Pastor for he smoothly carried on lifting his voice so nothing was lost.

Katherine and Hazel went to an Assemblies of God service which was very lively. The church was plush and air conditioned which was incongruous to the surroundings but the worship was good and an excellent sermon.

In the evening we went through another monsoon to Colinga Baptist Church, the oldest Bengali speaking church in Kolkata. We enjoyed the worship, sung in Bengali accompanied be a small percussion shaker. We joined in the best we could. 

Pastor Ashish had invited us to share so David brought a warm greeting and introduced us, we sang a song and Paul delivered the sermon. A strange experience - you had to take off your shoes to stand at the pulpit. As I spoke Pastor Ashish translated so it was hard to get a rhythm and there was also the street sounds (horns continually blaring) the rickety fans going and a dodgy microphone but God is awesome and uses what little we can do in amazing ways.

Communion was very special for though we are so different we are united by Christ who was present amongst us as we shared with our brothers and sisters.

Posted by Paul