After six consecutive Easter weeks in Abu Dhabi, the first in 2010, the 2016 Easter season finds me in the south of France, and attending a Maundy Thursday service in a tiny chapel in a village a half-hour drive from where we live.

Again, the first big surprise is that the area has any English-language Protestant services at all.

It was an Anglican/Church of England service, of course; I am not aware of any other English-language service in the area.

This congregation seems a familiar and settled group made up almost entirely of senior citizens.

A retired minister leads them, and they gather once a month for a service, usually in the town of Saint Pargoire. Various other activities are scheduled, including Bible studies.

For Maundy Thursday, a local French Protestant group reclaims the Pargoire site and the Anglicans move over to a village called Puissalicon, where a Roman Catholic chapel is available.

The chapel is an interesting thing in itself.

It may date back to the 13th century, which is old, even in France. It also is the only Christian house of worship I have been in where the primary figure, above the altar, does not represent Jesus.

In this case, it appears to be a bishop from some long-ago period; my neighbor decided it was a bishop “because that’s a bishop’s miter he’s wearing, isn’t it?” Anyway, it seemed cheeky, as the Brits would say, for Bishop Someone from centuries ago to hold pride of place.

Back to the service.

It was earnest and organized; these were 20 or so people who clearly know their religion.

But it was not quite the Anglican service with which I became somewhat familiar, in Abu Dhabi. You would think it would be, but it was not. Perhaps distance and ethnicity are at work.

In Abu Dhabi a significant fraction of the congregants are Indian.

In the Languedoc, they pretty much all seem to be British, and pretty much only English, at that.

I struggled to keep up, and not because I am unfamiliar with the basics of the Christian worship service. (I did 12 years in schools run by a church body.)

I was a beat or two off all night. It began when we were given three items, upon entering the chapel. A Book of Prayer supplement, a hymnal and an A4-size sheet with particulars relating to that service.

As always, the hymns (the tunes were played on an electronic device) were unknown to me. England and the U.S., we ought to have the same hymns, right? No. Four I’d never heard.

What makes things more difficult is that the Anglican hymnal does not include the music. So you can’t at least join with the group, because you can read music. You have no idea where an unfamiliar hymn is going and are left to guess.

(Saturday Night Live had a recurring sketch based on this concept, with Fred Armisen and Kristen Wiig pretending to know where a song was going, and making a hash of it. That was me.)

The multiplicity of book/handbook/sheet left us shuffling between the three, with me often a bit behind, and at several times I felt as if I were frustrating the woman next to me and that she was about to point out things to help. (She never did; great patience.)

Members of the congregation did several of the readings, and their accents struck me as far more posh than what we had in Abu Dhabi.

The “peace be unto you” moment snuck up on me, and it was difficult to get around in the fairly cramped chapel, which collided head-on with the apparent preference for shaking the hand of every person in the room. Also, being surprised by it left me stuck with a cold hand, which perhaps alarmed everyone it touched. (Had I seen it coming, I could have sat on my right hand for a minute.)

Anglicans love the “foot-washing” aspect of the holiday, when the minister washes parishioners’ feet, commemorating the moment when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. The “Maundy” in the night’s name comes from the Latin “mandatum” — commandment — to remember and reenact the Last Supper.

They washed feet in Abu Dhabi, too, but it was limited to half a dozen picked people. In this one, everyone was allowed to take part, and I felt a bit prominent, sitting it out.

The Eucharist/communion part of things caught me off guard, too. There was no altar, per se, so congregants approached the step leading to the altar area, where the minister would hand over a piece of soft bread and congregants would take turns facing one of two lay people handling a wine chalice. I choked and went straight to the chalice person, who tilted her head towards the minister, to straighten me out.

They take seriously, too, the post-communion prayer, and the little room had wooden kneelers below the chairs, but they seemed to have been made for people about 5 feet tall.

And, then, a “modern translation” beef. I prefer the King James Version of the Bible at all times, and I grasp that almost no one does that, these past 25 years or so, but still I had never been at a service where the Lord’s Prayer was done in “contemporary” English.

Not a fan. Not at all.

So, yes, I felt very self-conscious about much of the service, which is not usually the case. I should have focused on the meaning of the event, a recollection of the institution of Holy Communion and the start of the key moments of the Easter weekend.

Later that night, after the meal in the “upper room”, Jesus would be arrested, shuffled around various jurisdictions and condemned to be crucified at noon the next day.

But I found myself preoccupied with logistics, at this service.

Maybe I can do better next time.