Just before 6:30 on Sunday morning, I woke up from bed, picked up the phone on the table, checked today’s to-do list, and waited for the 6:30 alarm clock to ring.

Before 7:30, I was already sitting on a bench in the dining room, carrying a schoolbag. In it were a Snickers bar for breakfast, half a bottle of hot water, and a Chinese novel lent to me by a Taiwanese classmate. Finally, Teacher Zelle walked in and said, “Wait a minute, I’ll have a cup of coffee.” As she said this, she tore open the bag of coffee powder and bent down in front of the water dispenser to get the boiling water to make coffee.

The rain was pattering heavily outside. It seems that a typhoon has passed by recently, and the rain has been intermittent this week. Sometimes it pours down and wets the slippers under the eaves, and sometimes the sun is shining in the sky and dries the ground.

Zelle and I walked out of the yard and stopped the car on the road at the door. “The wind and waves have been very strong these days, and the tourist terminal on this road has suspended operations, so it is difficult to wait for a passenger tricycle. We can only take a motorcycle.” Passenger tricycles usually cost 3 yuan per person, and one for motorcycles The car costs 13 yuan.

Zelle spoke a few words in dialect to the motorcyclist and we got on. I was sandwiched in the middle, Zelle sat behind me, and I held an umbrella, barely covering our hair and upper bodies from getting wet.

After riding for 5 or 6 minutes, the rain became heavier and heavier, so we stopped on the side of the road to take shelter. By this time we had reached a lively part of the island. We paid half of the motorcycle price and took a tricycle with a carriage. The tricycle drove for another 7 or 8 minutes and passed the central area. After a short distance, Zelle asked the driver to stop.

We arrived at our destination just after 8 o’clock. Teacher Zelle took me to a Christian church to worship. Last night at the restaurant Zelle, teacher said she would go to church tomorrow. I happened to pass a church by the beach in the evening, so I asked her if it was that church. She explained to me that it was an Adventist church, not a Christian church. Church (Christian), invite me to come with you tomorrow.

When we walked into the church, a middle-aged man in white clothes was chanting on the small lectern to the right of the podium. “Does he speak English?” I asked Zelle after listening for a while. “No, he spoke Filipino mixed with English.”

We sat on the middle row of benches directly opposite the podium. A small platform stretched out behind each row of benches, where you could put your arms down. People behind you could hold on to the small platform of the seat in front of you when kneeling. There is a leather kneeling mat of the same length on the ground in front of the bench, with mottled cracks on it.

At some point during the ceremony, a group of young men in white came through the church door. “They are Altar Boys, who will assist the priest in completing the ritual.” Zelle leaned into my ear and said.

A pastor in green robes walked onto the podium from nowhere and sat on a high-backed chair in the middle. An Altar Boy adjusted the position of an electric fan to face him. Another young man in white clothes walked to the desk on the left side of the podium, opened the Bible, and selected passages to share with everyone. The two monitors on the wall lit up at the same time, prompting English prayers, and everyone chanted along.

When it was time to distribute Holy Communion, several men in white came over with plates. The Christians in the crowd lined up in several lines to receive a small piece of bread and eat it. The communion plates were finally returned to the green priest’s table. The priest poured the crumbs from each plate into a copper cup, mixed it with water and drank it. The men in white took away the plates.

A woman wearing white clothes and holding a long pole came in twice, with a white cloth bag tied at the top of the pole. When they passed a row of benches, they straightened the long pole and brought the cloth bag to us. “This is for collecting donations, you can do whatever you want.” I followed Zelle and put the change in my wallet. When the women brought the cloth bags to us for the second time, I was a little puzzled. Zelle told me, “The first time was a donation to help the poor and do good deeds. The second time was a donation to the church itself.”

The prayer is over. The pastor in green walked down from the podium, and a group of people gathered around him. He shook a bottle in his hand and threw out water drops. “This is sprinkling holy water, and you can get blessings.” So we also stepped forward to receive the blessing of the holy water.

Zelle pointed to the second floor. The music in the church was not the music played, but the choir on the second floor singing in real time. It dawned on me that when I stood up in the middle to pray, I turned around and looked up, and sure enough I saw 4 or 5 young people on the second floor, and there was another person in front of them who seemed to be directing the rhythm.

The rain had stopped when we walked out of the church, and the morning air was cool and refreshing. Zelle took a tricycle back to school, and I went hiking to explore the unexplored areas to the north.