going to church isn't as easy as you thought

Yesterday for the first time in a long time, Guchi and I were able to attend a complete mass at St. Mary’s Church. By “complete,” I mean with singing, the Prayer of the Faithful, and most importantly the priest’s Homily. It was nice, and I realized only yesterday that I missed the experience.
You see, ever since I became pregnant 2 years ago and almost fainted because of the heat and suffocation, we avoided going to mass when we knew there would be a lot of people attending. Unlike churches in the Philippines, here in Dubai, since there are only 2 Catholic churches here, and even though there are so many Obligatory masses from Friday to Sunday, the churches are always full (if you’re just standing, you can sometimes feel the person behind you breathing down your neck)...practically overflowing, up to the point wherein the people stand outside the church just to hear mass through the speakers; not to mention the (lack of) parking space around the area. The only time we do make it a point to attend complete mass at St. Mary’s is during Simbang Gabi. We just make sure that we arrive really, really early so that we can park Piper nearby and get enough breathing space a good place to sit.
Now, we only go to church on Saturday mornings at 6:45am when only a few people attend (and there is enough space in the Babies Room for the whole family to sit). Unfortunately, there is no singing (except for the Alleluia part before the Gospel), no Prayer of the Faithful, and no Homily; so these early morning masses usually just last about 30 minutes. I know it’s not the same, but because of our situation, we don’t have any other choice. The only reason why we weren’t able to attend the morning mass last Saturday was because my work starts at 7am (on the days I have my driving classes).
After last night, I suggested to hubby that while Caila is still in the Philippines, maybe we could attend regular mass. We would just have to go to St. Mary’s directly after work like what we did. His only concern was our food, because by the time the mass was over, it was almost 7pm and our last meal was lunch at 1pm. We decided to eat out since we were too lazy and tired to cook. It took us about 15 minutes to get out of the church parking area and another 15 minutes to arrive at Deira City Centre. By the time the food was in front of us, we were starving!
Friday regular masses is out of the question because it’s the weekend (too many people). Saturday masses are ok, I guess (we don’t want to attend the ones between 9am and 5pm because of the scorching heat). And we only have 2 choices for the Sunday mass (6pm and 7:30pm). Maybe we could have dinner first and then attend the 7:30pm mass…but this would mean us rushing home to cook, eat, and going to church as early as we can (indigestion?), or eating out (expensive!).
Anyway, we’ll see. For the meantime, at least we perform our weekly obligations to God, and that’s what’s really important (but I really do miss the complete mass...).