New Britain Survey: Church

Sometimes surveys happen where there are no churches, but it's getting harder and harder to find places without a church. (That's a good thing!) The areas we visited in New Britain were no exception.

Every single village we visited has a church, and most of them were established around WWII! (Although new buildings have been built since then...) Here's the church on Melenglo Island:

And here's the inside of the church on Ayuvet Island...

Most of the churches are very well attended and people are very devout. They are all Catholics. Many people have images of Jesus and Mary, like the ones below, in their homes.

We were in New Britain during the "month of Mary." Every single day people held prayer services for Mary (sometimes twice a day, or all night long!), with singing and prayers. Each village also had shrines like the one you see below. In some villages, each family built their own shrine and the Mary statue would be moved to a different house every day in her procession.

At the end of the month, Mary's procession came to an end at the local parishes (church headquarters over a certain area). We were in Lulakivi village when the Mary from there traveled to Valanguo parish church. Almost every person in the village decorated their canoe with greenery (Mary had a specially decorated one) and paddled to Valanguo, loudly singing local language songs to Mary all the way.

It was quite a sight to see dozens of canoes headed for the island, and then see and hear dozens each from three other nearby villages all headed to the parish church with their Marys too!