It was technically our second Sunday here in the UK but felt like our first because well arriving here the Sunday before just seemed like a blur so I’ll just reflect on it like it was our first one.

It didn’t even dawn on me that it was Palm Sunday until my husband mentioned that we were going to the Fijian community Palm Sunday gathering at their camp. And it was such a cool experience to see my sons blend right in with their fellow mates. It also seemed very surreal and just a bit crazy to realise that I was now in my mom’s shoes so to speak.

Like I mentioned before, I grew up in the states, I was probably 6 or 7 when we moved to CA and one of my first core memories was meeting the Fijian kids there. I don’t think I even realised that I was actually in a different country but I remember thinking ‘like oh woah I’ve never met these kids before but they were Fijian and I was Fijian so we must be related’ haha I just felt more at home hanging out with other kids from Fiji too.

But then I started going to school and there were all these new kids, palagi kids mostly and they talked to their parents way differently than I did. I mean I remember being often scared to talk back to my mom but my kai valagi friends had no second thoughts about telling their mom or dad about how they had forgotten something in their lunch or telling them to wait because they were still playing. Chhhhiiillleee if I ever told my mom to wait for anything, I’d be waiting to come back to life from that exact moment haha.

Anyway, it was such a flashback experience watching my own kids play with other Fijian kids when the service finished and the moms and young women were dishing out the food, the husbands and men working together to rearrange the chairs and tables. It was familiar but at the same time new and I couldn’t help but smile and be in awe of this amazing God.

I remember being the little girl that was part of all the action choruses and trying or pretending to sing with the teens choir to make up the numbers, my mom dressing me up in these pastel yellow dresses with white socks and shoes and headbands to match, oh and don’t’ forget the little matching bag. A sight to see I tell you, but man how funny it was to see some of the little girls there that Sunday in a similar get up, I could almost hear the back and forth of mother and daughter getting ready that morning.

I’m grateful that our first Sunday was children’s Sunday, they did the sermon, the dances, the singing and it was so beautiful. It reminded me of how simple and childlike this faith truly needs to be. I mean yes, of course we grow and we go form having milk to actual meat in scripture but this simple, childlike faith is consistent, it’s dependent on the Holy Spirit, on God, on this Jesus that rode through the streets of Jerusalem and the crowds

cried out, saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!

I appreciate the reminder and as we go into the Easter weekend, I’m grateful for the times, the seasons and the reason I too get to cry out Hosanna to the Son of David!

Stay blessed.

-A