Ebeye 2nd Branch - my home branch for the year

The familiar font of the church’s logo is pasted on a plain white wooden building. The taxi driver, who picked me up the last mile of the 5 mile hike to church, has taken me to the right place. The driver refuses payment. Maybe one of the other 12 riders piled into the cab and back of his pickup truck has already paid him enough, or maybe this is his contribution to churchgoers on the Sabbath.

I walk to a shady spot by the front door to change my hiking sneakers for zoris, remove my sun-protect hat, and try to freshen up a bit before I enter the Lord’s house. I find my way to the Relief Society room, where the meeting is already underway. Naturally, my lone new white face in a sea of beautiful brown Marshallese faces causes a stir. The teacher asks a Marshallese woman to sit next to me to translate. They ask me to introduce myself. I say “Iokwe aolep” (hello, everyone). The translator gets up to move back to her original seat, saying “Oh, she speaks Marshallese.” I plead, “No, don’t go! I’m almost out of words!”

The translator gives me a sentence or two sporadically throughout the lesson, but I’m fine meditating on the topic of the lesson: Christ’s atonement, making resurrection possible. At the end of the lesson, someone chooses one of the 44 hymns in the Marshallese hymnbook for the closing hymn. With no chorister or piano, a woman in the back row sings the first line of the hymn, setting the pitch and cadence. Although only the melody is printed in the hymnbook, the other women join her in beautiful spontaneous two-part harmony. I joyfully add my tenor for a third part, and instantly feel at home in this roomful of my sisters. God hears every language.