Day trips around Suva included a challenging hike up Mount Korobaba, swimming at a local waterfall, and visiting the museum followed by games in the park and a trip to the beach.  We travelled to these places with the young people all packed into the back of a truck, often singing hymns along the way.  We had two ecclesial lunches with the Suva Ecclesia using the traditional Fijian lovo, an earth oven made by heating rocks in a fire.  Everyone was involved in the process – the young men start the fire early in the morning, men scrape the coconuts while the women prepare the meat and veggies.

The new year was celebrated Fiji style – commencing with a song and praise night.  Fijian hymns and songs are all sung acapella with the opening line sung by a few of the sisters to set the key.  It was wonderful to see the young people so actively involved in the ecclesia, putting together the program and getting involved in items and readings during the night.  Fireworks soon followed the conclusion of the song and praise night, with lots of flour, baby powder and buckets of water thrown which resulted a huge mud fight.  There was lots of noise from banging on pots and pans, and plenty of mud was thrown around.  The night finished at 2am with many cleaning up the mess – “you make it dirty, you better clean it” was the catch phrase of the night!

The Suva Ecclesia is enjoying being back at the hall again with face to face contact after the pandemic, with Zoom still available for those that are unable to make it.  The trip to Fiji was a reminder to us of the worldwide family and the wonderful fellowship that we can share with brothers, sisters, and young people across different cultures and places.  The response from sharing a week together with like-minded people made it hard to leave and sad to say our goodbyes.

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