On Christmas Eve I went to a Christian service with my worker Bounlam. The service was to start at 8:00 PM and we got there around 5:30. When we got there, everyone was milling around eating food, talking, and singing. Bounlam and I ate our dinner in the Pastor's house where the Christian School students also slept. As we were eating I asked him a lot about religion in Laos. These are some things I learned:
1) Buddhism is the main religion, and all other religions are persecuted even though you are technically allowed to practice them (Animism, Christianity, etc). I have not heard of anyone getting physically beaten, but they will take your livestock or find other ways to degrade you (see below).
2) If you work for an NGO or in your own private business, it is fine if you openly practice Animism/Christianity/etc. However, all government held positions, including teachers, must be Buddhists.
3) You need to put your religion on your CV/Resume! And if you are hired/fired based on your religion - that is completely acceptable!
4) Therefore, if you are a practicing Christian and you want to be a teacher, you need to change your CV to say you are Buddhist, and you can no longer go to Christian services regularly. If the government finds out you are go to Christian services you could get fired and be red-listed. So crazy!
After we finished eating we went into the little building that served as their gather space. They had it decorated with Christmas decorations (paper chains, Christmas trees) and they had a projector that showed random Christmas images, probably pulled down from Google Images. Later, the projector would serve to show song lyrics (in Lao). Bounlam told me that the Christianity he practiced was Gospel and so the set up of the service was very different than what I was used to. There was about 30 mins of songs and "drama" (short skits), then the pastor preached for 30-40 minutes, and then we had more songs and drama, all of it in Lao. However, one of the songs was Silent Night! Granted it was in Lao and there are more syllables in Lao than English so they were trying to squeeze it in to the same melody. I couldn't even sing the English version because it threw me off so much - I had to stick with humming. We stayed for about 2 hours of the service and got home around 10pm.
Usually when travelling, I love going to church in different languages because I can still follow it and it gives me a sense of peace and community in an area I'm not familiar with. However, since the services aren't Catholic I don't know what is going on and I didn't get as much out of it as I had hoped. Overall, I'm still very glad I went so that I had my Christian fix for the year.
