Fijians at Dandenong

from w
Today Peceli and I drove up to Dandenong Uniting Church for the Fijian service where Inoke was having his trial sermon and leading the worship. Dandenong is a large multicultural city - actually part of Melbourne - and this church is very active with non-English-speaking-background groups - such as Cook Islanders, Fijians, Filipinos, Hindi and Fijian as well as work with refugees such as from Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Burma. Here are some photos taken during the lunch which followed the service, including a five day old baby boy, another grandchild for Asena and Jim Smith!

A Fijian choir in Melbourne

from w
Yesterday we were delighted to welcome the members of the Dandenong Uniting Church Fijian congregation to Altona Meadows/Laverton church and their choir sang several beautiful anthems conducted by Raijeli. What a lovely time we had meeting with our friends in worship, sharing a meal together and later on there was plenty of talanoa and some yaqona drinking in Sailosi's home in Wyndam Heights. This choir were at the Adelaide Conference and were my favourite to win, but alas, the polished professional sounds of the city of Sydney won! At Adelaide a promise was made to give scholarships to promising singers/conductors from that conference so I hope one of the young women from Dandenong is given an opportunity for further music training. If Paulini can do it, so can many other young Fijians!

Click on pictures to enlarge.