Glossolalia.

That's right. Glossolalia. The act of speaking in tongue(s). I knew that this is what Pentecostals do, but I had no idea what we were in for earlier this evening.

After a night of sin (re: moderate to heavy drinking), Erin and I were saddened to realize there was no way we could make it to church in the morning to repent. Praise Jesus that the Pentecostals offer both morning AND evening services. So we went to evening service. The usual church goers (which includes your less-than-usual church goers) were waiting patiently for the service to start. We met some nice folks who explained that there would be a baptism at the end of the service, if we wanted to stick around. I will get to that later. First, the service commenced with a prayer, which, as Erin said below, started like a usual prayer. This lasted for all of half a second and then a lot of people started speaking in tongue. It totally caught me off-guard and it took me a few minutes to recover. This was no Mormon service. But I got used to it, and found myself saying "Amen," and "Allelujah" when the rest of the congregation did. The power of the masses is amazing.

And the singing. I haven't sung like that since I drove cross country by myself. It was wonderful and releasing. No one was judging me. It was beautiful. I loved watching everyone get really into it, especially the bigger woman shaking the tambourine shaped like the fish. After about 20 minutes of singing praise songs, we were encouraged to get up and shake everyone's hand. This was really enjoyable and I got a wonderful huge from said Tambourine lady. I felt loved.

After a beautiful sermon from the pastor about our human sin, we watched two baptisms. There was a woman (maybe in her 30s) and a young man (maybe in his late teens) one the baptismal order for the evening. The woman was definitely "filled with the Holy Ghost" and I was very excited that she found God.

Besides the positively energizing spirit that I felt while at this church, I also noticed that maybe church service would be a problem if there was ever... say... a power outage. It is strange seeing so many modern instruments being used at a worship service. But then again, Jewish Sabbath is like a time-warp into pre-electricity days.

Tomorrow we meet with young Baha'i believers (What do they call themselves?). Our adventures continue.