This happened to me every holy week for the four years that I lived in Albuquerque, NM, because the Coptic community there would at their request get a priest sent to them from Egypt, and none of these priests happened to know any English. So the entire service as concerned the priest's parts would be in Arabic and Coptic, as it is usually in Egypt, whereas our usual services would be primarily in English (~ 80% English, ~ 20% non-English), because HG Bishop Youssef, our bishop, mandated that all of the churches in his diocese use primarily English in their Sunday services, to be open to the wider society and the younger generation who sometimes don't know Arabic.
It was interesting. It turned out I knew more Arabic than I thought I did, but still not enough to do the entire service in that language (the sermons, for instance, required someone to help me understand them; I usually got the gist of what abouna was saying in the sense of "He's talking about grace" or "He's talking about this part of the readings", but couldn't pick out specific points). It was more fun in the post-liturgy Agpeya meal, when the priest would try to talk to me. There were already a few non-anglophones in the community (one of them knew Arabic and Italian, but wasn't very confident in her English, even though it was okay for basic greetings), so I was used to that dynamic, but never with a priest. It was kind of sweet, in a way.
