The Church in Xiamen

Church in Xiamen is only two hours long! From 10 am to 12 noon. We go to the Branch President’s home here in Xiamen where he has a bunch of chairs, a table for the sacrament, a laptop, and conference-call phone all set up and prelude music playing. The branch is a virtual branch held via Skype and conference call for people that reside allover China (basically everyone else that doesn’t live in Chengdu, Xi’an, Shanghai, or Beijing).

The branch presidency counselor, who resides in a different city, conducted my first Sunday in Xiamen. He made some announcements for their branch and reminded everyone listening in of the laws and regulations against proselyting while in China. Then we sang the opening hymn, had an opening prayer, called a sister to be Relief Society secretary, and sang a sacramental hymn. Then they muted the conference call for eight minutes while everyone at each location blesses and passes the sacrament. Then we got back on the call to listen to two speakers, sang a closing hymn, and had a closing prayer followed by a ten-minute break.

After that, they conducted a roll call to take attendance of who all was listening in. There must have been a dozen or so cities called out over the conference call to see if anyone was in attendance from those cities. We had the biggest group in attendance with 14 of us (10 from BYU, the branch president and his wife, and two others). Other groups were only handfuls: two, four or five people at each location. Then we resumed with a speaker, who happened to be the other counselor in the branch presidency. He told us about his experiences with the church in other foreign countries where he has lived, and he has lived in a lot of foreign countries! Then we closed with prayer and that was it.