Church in the Grove

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Sunday was a good day. We had to get up for breakfast at 8, but then we could go back to sleep until church at 1:30. But after I got up and ate, I didn’t really feel like sleeping anymore. So I ended up sitting in the common room doing some writing and also some sketching of the views. It was nice to sit there and just look at the landscape because it’s completely gorgeous up here.

Everyone else started getting up around 11 to get ready for church. There isn’t a local branch, so our group is just holding our own sacrament meeting in a grove of trees behind the hostel. It was really amazing having sacrament meeting outdoors. Being outside jerked me out of the familiar routine we sometimes get into and made me really notice what was going on. The talks were all on the atonement, and I felt like they all sort of focused on how physically real it was, which seemed appropriate in a place so physically there.

After church, I took some more pictures and worked on more writing. We’re leaving this place tomorrow, yet I feel like I could spend forever here (if, of course, I had reliable internet access—the computer was broken this morning). The lake is so clear and blue and outside you can hear everything—there’s no extra noise going on.

In the evening, we sit around in the common room and one of the girls on the trip plays some songs she wrote on a guitar. We also chat with some other people staying in the hostel, particularly a boy from the Netherlands. It’s interesting to see how people from outside the US view Americans—“fat, stupid, ignorant,” he says, not particularly flattering—and I’m not sure if our behavior helped a lot since we were all rather silly and excitable.

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