Abyssinian Baptist Church

The wakeup call came at 5:45 am, an hour earlier than we'd asked, so the daylight saving change hadn't worked as well as we expected.

On the coach again at 8:30 am with all our bags packed, we travelled to Harlem to attend a church service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church. We had pre-booked, which was a good thing because there was a queue of tourists stretching the whole block waiting to get in, and we got priority ahead of all of them. We still had to queue in the chilly New York morning air from 9 am to 11 am, and whiled away the time singing.

The church is very efficient and had ushers (men in suits, ladies in white dresses and gloves) doing crowd control. At last they let us in and we took seats in the upper balcony. The liturgy was not too different from what I remember in the days when I went to church, and I was able to sing along with some of the hymns. The choir sat in the choir stalls up above, next to a very nice organ, and sang some Hayden. I was impressed that the Assistant Pastor was a woman, who spoke very well; but the highlight was definitely the sermon by Pastor Butts, who was a very powerful speaker. He welcomed visitors, mentioned us as Sweet Adelines from New Zealand, and had us sing a song (It Is Well With My Soul) which won us a standing ovation - heady stuff.

The congregation member next to me kept punctuating the sermon, about what it means to be a Christian, by calling out "Amen" and "Preach". There was also quite a lot of political comment as the Pastor reported on a recent visit to Washington and his support for President Obama.

During the offertory the choir sang a lively gospel song and everyone clapped. The service ended around 1:30 pm, and we got back on the coaches and headed towards Boston. We stopped at another Costco outlet for rest breaks, food (a very late lunch) and more shopping. I picked up some cardboard boxes from FedEx to post some of my surplus clothing home.

We got to Andover, Massachussetts, around 7:30 pm, had our usual happy hour and then retired to our rooms for dinner and unpacking.