Hello, Lord, I’m here. And here. And over here.

Corporate Paddling Race – Doing the wave.

Corporate Paddling Race – That winning feeling.

Corporate Paddling Race – Ready for action.

Corporate Paddling Race – Why we love pirates.

Kayak piggyback: Muri Lagoon.

Corporate Paddling Race – Warpaint.

At the market: Warrior dancer.

At the market: Mirror, mirror.

Before the first missionary walked on the lagoon to bring Christ to the Cook Islands in 1821, the locals wore very little in the way of clothes and tended to kill, roast and devour their enemies.

So, yeah, pretty much Party Central.

These days, there’s at least one church around every corner and if some Pretty Young Thing were to doff her top to indulge in a bout of European tanning, she’d be quickly asked to cover up, lest the sight of perky, pink nipples upset the locals.

Needless to say, nearly 200 years on, the party is a little less touchy-feely than it used to be.

I have managed to visit the holy buildings of four different denominations in my time on Rarotonga. This is not because I’m particularly religious. Let’s just say it gives me something to do of a Sunday morning. Let’s just say I’m hedging my bets. Let’s just say I’m still riding my motorbike without a helmet and call the $2 coin I deposit in each collection plate an insurance dividend of sorts.

For the most part, I’ve attended the Catholic Cathedral in Avarua. I was raised Catholic so, in a way, I’m simply migrating to the familiar. Although, to be perfectly honest, my younger self spent most of the one-hour Mass not so much concentrating on the wonders of the Eucharist as mentally replaying the action from Saturday’s Hockey Night in Canada broadcast. Jesus may have saved, but Phil Esposito scored on the rebound.

I’ve also attended a service at the Cook Islands Christian Church in the village of Matavera, because the brother of one my workmates is the pastor there. The service was pretty much all in Cook Islands Maori, so I didn’t understand very much of what was said. Although I’m pretty sure the message was about being a good man and always obeying your wife. Or something like that.

All Cook Islanders appear to possess beautiful singing voices, and it is at church that you have the best opportunity to hear them. The hymns are sung in a layered harmonic style, with the men and women singing counter to each other. Every church features singing but, by my reckoning, the parishioners of the Matavera CICC are a truly angelic chorus.

The New Hope church meets in the hall on the Pitt Media Group property. My former boss, George Pitt, founded this church in 2001 and, in my view, it just seemed politically correct to attend services supervised by the man who pays you each week. Unlike the Catholic service, with its vestments and robes and candles and communion and pomp and ceremony, the New Hope church offers mostly songs to the Lord, along with a fairly lengthy sermon. If the kids get restless, they are simply shunted out the back door to run around the lawn.

Another of my workmates is the son of the bishop of the Apostolic Church, which is why I also attended one of those services. When I asked what time I should arrive, I was told 10 a.m. What I wasn’t told is that, from 10-11, everyone breaks up into small groups for a Sunday School lesson, with that day’s Scripture reading as the subject matter.

The actual service? Didn’t start until 11. My friend’s father, the bishop, took the first sermon slot. He used a blackboard as a tool, assigning numbers to each letter of the alphabet. He then wrote out words and asked us to add up the numbers beside each letter.

I hate math, but I can add in my head if I remain calm, and so was soon yelling out the answers. The young lad beside me, however, always seemed a beat ahead. I congratulated him later for his addition skills. He informed me that I tended to whisper the answer when I arrived at it and he simply yelled out whatever I said, and then took the credit.

He’s going to make a fine politician one day.

Again with the singing. At one point, nearly the entire congregation was at the front of the church belting out a rendition of Kumbaya that took me back to my Boy Scout days. I had an urge to start a fire and incinerate an entire bag of marshmallows.

There was a couple visiting from Ottawa sitting behind me, and the husband was obviously filled with the Holy Spirit. Either that or he was snorting the incense. He was continually letting loose with the kind of cheer usually reserved for when the Senators score. I know the locals appreciated his enthusiasm but I could see eyebrows twitching with every outburst.

But it was back to the Catholic Cathedral – St. Joseph’s – for Easter Mass. This one was dedicated to the children and there were about 50 youngsters in the front rows, all dressed in their best whites.

Several of them marched to the front to recite a paragraph each from the Gospel reading. By memory. Considering there are some mornings I can’t remember my own name, I was impressed with their poise.

Seeing them all there, scrubbed and combed, once again brought home the thought that Polynesians, as an ethnic group, are among the most beautiful people in the world. Especially the children.

Unfortunately, as they grow older, they tend to fall prey to fatty food, salty food, alcohol and tobacco, all of which takes its inevitable, nasty toll on that natural beauty.

Those poisons, of course, are courtesy of the traders who followed the missionaries to these shores.

In retrospect, the locals should have eaten the missionaries and kept on barbecuing them until they stopped trying to insinuate their white man’s beliefs on a population and culture that had somehow managed to exist for centuries without Christmas or Easter.

I’m thinking these beautiful, happy people have never needed our help to enter the kingdom of Heaven.

They were going there anyway, laughing and smiling and singing enroute.

We should be so lucky.