Friday, October 2, 2009

Travel Diary - Day Twenty Two

Day Twenty Two – Steamy Preaching
Sunday 20 Sep 09
Up bright and early for church. Didn’t really need to be – I had my preaching stuff pretty much together, but everyone else was up and around, the ladies anyway. I seem to spend lots of time hanging around waiting, wait some more and then wait some more. Sure I fill the time in with different things but the randomness leaves me feeling somewhat less than satisfied with how I am using my time. Still, if I operated this way in NZ I would be a much more relaxed person all round. I’m just not sure that anyone else would be prepared to wear it for long.

The van that was coming to pick up the rice, flour and peas was late – apparently that’s not altogether unusual. There was a bit of surprise when I suggested I go with Patrick and Felissa in the van as I think everyone was expecting me to arrive later with Keith. What I really wanted was the opportunity to see the Sunday School in action. Turned out Keith wanted to shield me from that particular experience as it wasn’t going as well as he would like. The woman who runs it when Felissa is not there is only semi-literate and struggles to get information across to the children. I find myself wondering if there is not some way of empowering a person at that level to lead anyway, maybe by providing them with tools that require less reading. I managed to talk my way into the van, largely I think because everyone was so surprised that I asked in the first place. On the way to Sophia Felissa explained how she would love to get some flannelgraph to teach the children – I immediately thought of Michael and his love for flannelgraph. Apparently it is almost impossible to get here in Guyana but you can see how it would be an excellent tool. Maybe that’s something the Brockville and Kaikorai Sunday Schools could think about supplying…just a thought 

So the Sunday School wasn’t at all like what we are used to. The children were all sitting on the pews listening to a story being read to them when we arrived. I’m not certain, but I got the feeling they had been there for a while. There were around 45-50 children with about 8 or 9 adults sprinkled among them. I got no sense of why the other adults were there. No sooner had we arrived than I was asked to tell a story. I was completely caught on the spot so I stood up and started speaking without having any idea what was coming next. By the time I was about six or eight sentences in I had a bit of an idea of how the story was shaping and no idea how it would end. Getting close to the end I had a brainwave about how to finish the story and fortunately that lead on to a pretty reasonable moral. Talk about working with limited resources!! I told a story of a little girl who liked to help her mum in the kitchen, how she decided to make a cake for her mum, had no idea what to do and used the wrong ingredients. Everyone knew the result would be inedible by the time I finished. Then I said that the Mum had some of the concoction and said it was really nice because no matter what mistakes the little girl had made her mum still loved her very much. I then talked about how God loves us even when we make mistakes. I had them all laughing along although whether it was with me or at me I’ll never be sure.

The food distribution was interesting. As families arrived Felissa wrote their names on a sheet. At some point in the service names were no longer added to the list – in Keith’s words they had to get the spiritual food as well as the physical food. This is a requirement of the church that funds the food. At the end of the service Keith stands at the back and calls out people’s names in the order they have been written down. People come up, get their package and sign next to their name to show they have received the food. Seems like a hassle but it helps to reduce some of the cheating that has been experienced where food has been sold for money, or all given to a select few people, not here but in other instances.

The service itself is much simpler than what we are used to. Partly that’s a time constraint thing and partly it is attributed to literacy, although I’m not sure that argument would stand up to too much scrutiny. We had a short opening that included me teaching everyone a song – Summa Corda – The Lord be with you, a couple of prayers, some notices, the reading and an opportunity for testimonies to be shared. The last was dominated by an excited lady sharing how since she had left her job God had been supplying her every need, including her tithe.

Then I got up to preach. I should mention at this point that the day had been one of the hottest we have had this week. By the time I had finished imagining out loud how Levi felt when Jesus called him I was drenched and it only got worse as I went. I enjoyed speaking and seemed to get some good responses as I went. It has been kind of funny because I have been told on several occasions that no-one answers questions when you ask them. Turns out they do answer questions, and know when to laugh in the right spots – or maybe they have a clapper loader out the back . It’s great when you can tell a joke in a completely different culture and they still get it!! I do admit that I have changed some of the details to suit the place but a good joke seems to translate.

The service seemed to go really well. It was a bit of a surprise when, towards the end I started repeating some things and people began joining in with the repetitions. Once I got used to it, it was rather fun and I made the most of it to add a combined prayer at the end that sounded really great as everyone joined in.

The rest of the day was spent sharing various kinds of music, me learning dance moves to a Jamaican Christian reggae song – I think that can stay here , going out for dinner and watching a movie. All in all a good day. I have been enjoying my stay here. I do get frustrated at some things but that is all part of the process and I don’t carry it for long. The best thing is that I am able to make mistakes, find out what they are and move on and everyone just laughs and forgets. That’s kind of nice.

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