I woke up thinking about two things. First, the smells of Madagascar, especially
the city smells. I do not have a highly
developed sense of smell, but I can tell you that the cities here smell similar
– good and bad - to large cities everywhere with a couple of exceptions. There is significant litter strewn throughout
town and in certain places it has your basic trash pile smell. Most notably, however, is the smell of
smoke. There are small fires constantly burning
somewhere, either for people cooking over the fires or, since it is late winter
here, warming themselves. That smell
hangs over almost everywhere we go in town.
It is not unpleasant, but it is pervasive.
The second thought I woke up with was a note that Tina
Smothers sent me about her young son, Jojo.
Tina told Jojo that I am here in Madagascar. He has been watching the cartoon movie
Madagascar and keeps looking for me in it.
I woke up grinning at the thought of that. I’ll have to ask him if he saw me in the
movie.
In the morning we went to the seminary at which Pastor
Laurent is dean of students. In the
morning, we met with a group of graduate students. Most were studying for a Masters degree and
a couple were doctoral students. Each
introduced themselves by name, city, and focus of their studies. Also joining us was Pastor Cheong Kim. Here is a bit of “it’s a small world after
all…” Pastor Kim knows Pastor
June-Gyoung Kim, the pastor who replaced Pastor Wan Tae Cho who was at the
Korean Church in Pinellas Park when our sister church relationship began. Both Pastor Kims came to our Saturday night
service a few months ago, and here’s the twist:
Pastor Laurent was with them.
Pastor Cheong Kim knows Pastor Laurent because Pastor Cheong Kim is a
missionary in none other than Madagascar.
What a connection! I sat next to Pastor Cheong Kim today and then he
took a group of us to a Korean restaurant for lunch (I had Bulgolgi…love that
dish!).
In the afternoon, I led an informal discussion about life in
the local church in America. As I was
describing life at St. Andrews, they stopped me when I discussed Life
Groups. I explained that the concept of Life
Groups attempts to solve the problem of superficial Christianity. This is when you have Christians who are
“3,000 miles wide and an inch deep.” In
Life Groups, Christians come together in groups and grow deep with one another,
deep in their knowledge of the Word, and deep in their commitment to Jesus
Christ. This struck a nerve with
them. Apparently this is a global issue. The denomination here planted 500 churches
last year. However, many of them are so
young spiritually that it is easy to fall back into patterns that include their
previous spiritual beliefs, an issue that the apostle Paul dealt with in
planting the first Christian churches.
I got a nice little gift after the teaching time – my sinus
infection escalated into flu-like symptoms.
Achy, shivering, and feverish.
They took me to the hotel where will spend the rest of the week and I
climbed under every blanket I could find fully clothed. Somewhere in the night, the fever broke and I
am much better today. I did not journal
last night, thus two days notes in one post.
There was one fun outcome of my night of shivers. Yesterday was Cile and my 29th
wedding anniversary. This is
definitively the furthest we’ve been apart for our anniversary. She was working until 8 pm so I decided to
call her at 9 pm after she got off of work.
That meant setting my alarm here for 4 am. I forgot that Kelly King had used the phone
Pastor Laurent gave me to call his wife, Michelle. So sleepy and delirious from a night of
fever, I hit the last number dialed, hear a voice answer, and jump right in:
“Happy anniversary.” “Why thank you,
John, but today is not my anniversary.”
It was Michelle King. So just for
the record, whenever it IS their anniversary, I called them from Madagascar to
let them know I was happy for them. Cile
appreciated the second phone call I made at 4 am when I spoke with her. It was good to hear my bride’s voice.
Today – Tuesday – was the first formal day of teaching. We went to a large church in town. That is the church as students were coming in
this morning in the photo above. I’m
guessing about 100 people, mostly graduate students who are also pastors, were
in attendance. Every event begins with
worship – singing, Scriptures, message, prayers – and this was no
exception. The seminary sponsors this
weeklong event and the Institute for Music, Liturgy, and Multimedia led today’s
session. There were a number of speakers
for the day and I was the second of the morning. Pastor Laurent asked me to speak about “holy
and liberating worship” and how our own worship at St. Andrews is exactly
that. For him, that is what stands out
about our worship. He asked me to talk
about the various methods we use to make such worship a reality, including the Internet
and audio and visual media. I had an
hour-long presentation including translation and another hour of questions and
answers. I was told that it gave many of
them practical ideas for worship that were rooted in strong theology. Their many questions confirmed it for me.
The afternoon session I was up front as a “resource person,”
meaning if something came up, I could speak to the question or issue. The subject of the afternoon was about
helping pastors with church music. They
covered issues like a new digital resource that will play the tunes of all of
the hymns in their hymnal so pastors will know it before they select it for
worship. Also, they talked about the
influence of the unique “Malagasy style” of music and lyrics that were
influenced by the revival movement we went to last week. The best part was they brought in a
collection of musicians who helped demo what they were talking about, including
the Tana Gospel Choir we saw last week.
They are not only good performers, but, I found out today, they are also
all trained musicians. They can all read,
write, and play music. They all know
music theory. Now I’m even more
impressed.
They took up an offering this afternoon. The pastor of the church called for it and he
said that anytime we give to God there should be joy in our heart when we do
so. We are giving to God! We are giving for the best cause in the
world! Let it show! He said music can
help with that. And then we had one of
the most enjoyable offerings I’ve ever experienced. The pastor invited people to come to the
front with their offering (standard practice for the churches here), the band
and choir to start singing, and the people to dance their way forward. I have no idea what the lyrics were, but
imagine coming forward with your offering while a song plays like “Boogie
Woogie Bugle Boy” or Dexter Poindexter’s “Hot, Hot, Hot” or any conga line at a
wedding reception and you’ll get close to the feel of the room. People were dancing and smiling and raising
their hands. I looked up and the pastor
was behind the communion table on the platform doing a little cha-cha an
smiling from ear-to-ear. I told Pastor
Laurent that since this is a Malagasy thing, when he gets back I want him to
dance while people dance their offerings to the front.
We went back to Pastor Laurent and Diamondra’s for
dinner. This was a special meal. Diamondra is flying back to the U.S.
tonight. The two of them would be apart
from each other for another few weeks. Plus, with the political situation here
one never knows what could change. It has been three years since Diamondra saw
her family. While the environment now is
relatively peaceful, one political act could change things and she may not see
her family for years again. That hung in
the air tonight as we ate.
I’m feeling much better now.
Thanks to Carol White who loaded me with cold medicine before we left, I
am treating symptoms for a cold and that’s it.
Time for rest.
Thinking of you.
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