Church in Oman

This morning wasn’t great.  I woke up with an overwhelming feeling that we should have rented a house in a different part of town.  I got up and started researching that part of town to try to prove to myself that the grass wasn’t greener over there.  It failed.  That community has garden areas, beach access, restaurants, shops, a grocery store, a hair salon, a doctor’s office, a dentist, a gym, pools, and so much more.  But, it is rather far from the boys’ school, which is the real reason we didn’t look there too much.  I could have put them on a bus to school, but I didn’t want to force a new school and bus ride on my kids.  I opted for school convenience over living convenience for me.

Things will get better.  Eventually I will meet people.  Eventually I will have a car and can get to more than just the school, a grocery store, a handful of American fast food restaurants, and coffee shops.  Bad days happen. 

"Some days are like that.  Even in Australia."

Moving on… it is Friday, and we had already decided to try out a church today.  As I’ve mentioned before, Fridays are holy days over here.  Therefore, even Christian churches meet on Fridays. 

It is not illegal to be a Christian over here.  It is not illegal to go to church.  The churches, however, are to be located in church compounds.  There are two main ones in our area, one in Ruwi and one in Ghala (The gh makes a guttural sound, fyi).  The church compounds have many churches that meet there.  Many are catholic and some are protestant.  And as we found out today, many of the protestant church buildings appear to be owned by PCO or Protestant Church Oman.  Their buildings are used by many groups throughout the day, so churches don’t always start first thing in the morning.

There are two main churches we are planning on checking out.  Today, we had decided to check out The Bread of Life Fellowship.  TBOLF meets at noon in the “new PCO main hall.”  This is what we knew as we approached the church compound.  We walked around until we found a non-Catholic building.  On a window, they had many announcements including a sign that listed when other churches met in that location including the one we were going to.  Woohoo!  We found it!  No, the building is not labeled.  That would be too easy.

The ushers were friendly and led us to seats.  They started with probably 5 songs.  It was led by a man and a worship band.  The congregation was much more energetic in their worship than your typical Baptist church.  There were some adorable little kids near us and one was dancing away up and down the aisle.  He made me smile.  The music was also a good 15-20 years old.  (We assume this may be the norm.  I’ll detail later the 90s boy band station that seems to play everywhere.) 

Inside the church building.

The kids all left after the music to go to age-specific classes.  They did some announcements then asked for first time visitors to stand.  Seeing as we were the only white people there, it’s not likely that we could have gone unnoticed.  So we stood (awkwardly).  But they had the congregation pray over the visitors, so that was nice and friendly.  The kids returned before the end of service, which seemed a bit distracting.  But to be honest, our group has to get out of the building for the next service to start.  You do what you have to do with your limited time in the building.  It reminded me a bit of Gilmore Girls and the church building in Stars Hollow.  In one episode, Reverend Skinner is forced to quickly finish his sermon, take down the cross, and leave the altar so that the Rabbi can put up a Star of David and begin his service.  Oh man, I love that show!

Back to Oman… after the service, everyone heads outside where they have pastries and juice.  We were guided to one side where they could greet us and tell us more about their other services.  A few different people even stopped to greet us on our way to the car.  Everyone was very friendly.  The lady sitting behind us had her boys guide our boys to the kids’ classes.  She also reassured me when only one kid came back at first.  And I think we saw the man who was sitting next to me while walking around this evening.  A man passing us said, “Nice to see you again.”  When I looked back to place him, I recognized his pants and shoes.  It was probably easier for him to remember us because, again, we were the only white people.

Our kids are old enough that we wanted their opinion on what they thought.  E thought his class was loud.  Not sure how one of my kids can think a room is too loud since they are normally the loudest kids, but okay.  J and E should have been in the same class because it was for 7-9 year olds.  Apparently, they didn’t believe that J was actually 7 because he is so small.  Poor kid.  He was a little bored in his class because it was too young for him.  He also had a kid ask him why he had white hair.  I don’t think he answered, but we talked about it later.  We discussed how unique it is here because so many people here have black hair.  Both kids may need to get used to questions like that.

We also may need to get used to people assuming we are tourists.  That was the assumption at the church.  Surely we don’t live here.  We obviously don’t fit in.  But people are friendly even though we are so different from them.  And, honestly, the wide array of clothing styles and colors at church today was beautiful.  It made me smile.