To church or not to church, that is the question!

There isn't a well defined point to this post, but I'm posting it anyway because maybe somebody has some insight into these thoughts that have been ricocheting around in my head the past few days.

We are encouraged to go to the churches offshore here, though it's certainly not required as there is a service onboard every Sunday. Getting there isn't difficult- you just find a group that's going, either by word of mouth or in the notebook where people let others know their plans. The day workers (locals) are usually excited to bring us and graciously act as hosts in churches that often don't speak English and sometimes French only secondarily. The problem (if it's even that) is that I feel almost voyeuristic there since it seems a lot is literally lost in translation and the worship style is so different (sometimes so as to be off-putting to me personally). I get so caught up watching other people and struggling to understand what is being said and done and to wrap my mind around it all that it doesn't become corporate worship, at least not on my part, at all. God feels secondary in my overall experience.

I think it's a great experience to go and an honor to be accepted and will continue to go once my poor back can stand the bumpy jeep rides and long services sitting down. Upon some introspection, though, I've also concluded that I find the ship's service vital to my "church needs," thereby making visiting offshore churches more of an extracurricular activity, albeit an important one. It's not that I therefore feel church services on shore are to be viewed as a "tourist attraction" (because I don't), but I don't feel that I'm being fed spiritually in the way that I know I personally need each week. I guess how that plays out in a practical way is that if it comes down to sleep or offshore church, sleep will probably win out. I've decided not to feel bad about it.

Maybe it just is what it is, and this experience is both a reprieve (given that I find the ship service fulfilling) and a way to understand better my own spiritual needs (helpful given the difficulty Peleke and I have had finding a church home in Florida). Thoughts? Insight?