A Tropical Sunday

In a beauty contest for Anglican cathedrals, Holy Trinity Suva would be unlikely to make the final. It's made largely of concrete with a chancel that tries a bit too hard to imitate the style of thirteenth-century Europe. The result is rather airless, with only the ceiling fans stirring the hot, humid air. But it does  have a multi-cultural and committed congregation. Indigeous Fijians, Fiji-indians, Melanesians, Tongans and assorted Europeans make up most of the mix.

I preached at both the 7.30 am and 10.00am services. At 7.30 the congregation was surprisingly  large while the 10.00 service had a large choir singing in a mixture of English and Fijian. 'Leaning on the everlasting arms' (if you don't know it, it featured in the recent remake of True Grit) in Fijian was surprisingly moving. I was almost melting as I stood at the lectern to preach. It's a good job I don 't depend on notes as the sweat running into my eyes would make reading difficult. A member of the choir took pity on me and lent me her woven fan.

Afterwards there was good conversation. Tilisi Bryce, the widow of the former bishop, was a teaching colleague of Diane's in Tonga and her mother was a great guide to Tongan language and culture. Now a university lecturer, Tilisi has all her mother's dignified bearing. Once again I found myself in a kava circle with some of the men. It tends to be where a lot of the significant discussion takes place, so it's worth the taste of the kava. At least it's no longer prepared - as it was in very distant times - by someone chewing the roots and then spitting them out to mix with water!

I'd arrived in Fiji a little before sun-down on Saturday and travelled with Winston and another minister on the three-hour road journey round the island of Viti Levu to Suva. The western part of the island has had terrible floods recently and occasionally the road all but disappeared. But the journey was a great way to pick up on the island. Around the perimeter are a string of tourist resorts and you could come for a holiday in one of them and never realise you were in a 3rd-world country. As half the population is descended from Indian labourers, there is a mixture of religions as well as cultures, so we pass Hindu temples and Mosques. Between villages there are many people walking along the road and occasionally someone on horseback. Before the light disappeared the landscape was a green mass of crops and forest, with tree-covered mountains in the distance. A large yellow moon rose through the coconut trees. 

Once in Suva we reached the compound of the Bishop's House. Diane and I were guests here a number of times over 30 years ago so it was strange coming to it again. It's a solid, old, two-storey house with pillars at the front. It put me in mind of those Somerset Maughan short stories about lone up-country planters going slowly mad in the heat! In fact, it's occupants are very sane: Archbishop Winston, his wife Sue and Sue's mother (93 and still very sharp) Daisy.

I had thought that my daily exercise regime would disappear here, but I found myself on a 2-hour (yes, that's right!) walk with Winston, starting at 5.45 this morning, just as it began to get light. Even at that early hour I missed the coolness of Belfast. We saw the sun rise over a distant island and walked in a huge arc around the citypassing fields, harbour, sports stadiums, schools and (yes, they're here too) a drive-thru McDonalds. On the way back I saw the sad skeleton of the Grand Pacific Hotel, once the 'Raffles' of the South Seas, now an empty shell but about to become part of a new hotel and conference complex.