Today was Sunday, so we had five services at this village! The first service was at 5:30. We were not required to come to the first service, but Huber was quite insistent the night before that we should definitely go. When morning came, he was the only one that didn’t go. That service was basically a y@rp and logos reading service. However, they asked us to sing a choir song, which we did.
Then we went back to our house for breakfast. Gee tricked us and told us that the only breakfast we were having was some roasted peanuts, some pork rinds, and other snacks we had along. So when the real breakfast of rice and various other foods came, we weren’t very hungry. We gave him a hard time, but he explained that if he was grinning when he said something, he was only joking.
School started at 8. Katrina, Darrell, Craig, and Gee taught school. They did several skits (David and Goliath was so convincing that one of the children started crying) and sang songs and told word stories. The regular school teacher (who was there assisting with logistics) is the daughter of the M shepherd who first came to the village. School was 2.5 hours long! After an hour, at 9, Kelly, Huber, and I left for the ladies’ service. The service started with two ladies sitting up front behind the two tables that flanked the speaker’s stand. They read the book, shared, and led singing. Then Kelly taught/shared (Surrey Chai translated). After that, Kelly, Huber, and I sang a trio.
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The cute little girl who passed the hat
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A piece of candy for answering a question
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A young lady with a sweet hair-do
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Here are some of my thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of speaking through an interpreter:
Disadvantages:
- Much of communicating is knowing your audience, thus communication is hampered because:
- You don’t know the inner health of your audience
- You don’t know the inner maturity of your audience
- You don’t know the inner needs of your audience
- You don’t know the education level of your audience
- You don’t understand the culture of your audience
- It’s hard to follow the flow of the service
- Extra care must be taken to change from a few specific 12-letter words to many less-specific 5-letter words
- It is difficult to do decent quality translation
- You can’t fellowship with words after the service, except through a translator
- Translator will act as a cultural filter and correct or at least explain cultural gaffes
- Pauses during translation give time to think
- Different cultures have different norms and you’re going to be doing things differently anyway, so it’s quite freeing to realize that many things that you think of as mistakes are not mistakes in another culture. Any mistakes you make that are considered such in their culture will be excused on the basis of cultural ignorance.
Advantages:
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The shepherd’s house which the village built for him
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The new meeting place that is under construction because the old one is so small
At the main service, which was around 11, Gee spoke and we sang more choir songs (which they absolutely loved!). We then had lunch and then another service in the afternoon. It was called the “youth” service, but everyone came. One of us spoke and we sang more songs.
After the last service at the village, several of the organization elders gave us each a Karen “purse”/bag (which is used by both males and females). Later we asked if we could buy some of the awesome, red shirts that the Karen men wore for dress shirts on Sunday and some of the lovely white dresses (edged with red) the Karen girls wore for Sunday. They had some of the shirts which we purchased for the smaller guys in the group. However, the big guys—Darrell and I—found no shirts which fit. As we were driving out of the village, the pretty young lady who is the school teacher came to our vehicle and insisted on giving us another shirt. We felt badly because we did not at all want to hint at more gifts, we wanted to pay her for it, and we tried, but she insisted.
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The school teacher is standing to Katrina’s right, your left; Katrina is the one standing right in front of me
Then off we went to the next village (about 6 km away) with one truckload of villagers from that village in front of us and one behind us.
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As we pulled into their village, we drove right past the school. Several teenagers were playing what they call lacrosse, but which is nothing like what is called lacrosse in America. After we unloaded our things, I went back to watch. It’s like volleyball, only the net is neck-high, they can’t use their hands, the ball is a small, hollow, woven reed thing, and they spike with their feet and heads. They are amazing! They did standing flips to spike the ball with their feet!
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Karen lacrosse
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Karen lacrosse
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Karen lacrosse
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I then went back to my hosts’ place (who had been visiting the previous village while we were there, so we kind of knew them already) and ate supper.
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Supper
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I then went out and took a shower. While I was in the shower it began to rain and I then heard the meeting place bell ringing. I hurriedly finished my shower (in the dark!) and ran back to the house. The others had already left. It was raining fairly hard by then and I hoped against hope that they had left the SUV unlocked because my word, notes (I was talking that night!), and poncho were in there. Fortunately they had, and several minutes later I was standing in the back of the meeting quietly struggling to remove my poncho.
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The shower is on the left, the toilet on the right; this was a fairly typical Karen outhouse/showerhouse. It worked great! 
This was another village in which they had no grid power, and the church’s solar panel/battery had a quite limited amount of juice. Taking up much of that juice were the electric guitar amps (this was a first for us in Karen meeting!) and the large sound system which had a bull horn that broadcasted the service to the entire village. There was only enough juice left to power two bulbs. Unfortunately there were three bulbs. They did some rewiring, with requisite sparking as they snipped wires, unscrewed screws, and moved alligator clips to make so that only the two front bulbs would be powered. They were all fluorescent bulbs, of course, so when the one circuit with two bulbs had juice, neither of the bulbs would light.
After we got the power issues straightened out, we began our service. We did our normal service and when we came to the end and took y@rp requests, it was our turn to give out a y@rp request. Huber was very sick. Several men came up to lay hands on him and y@rp for him, but just about then he bolted out the door and nearly emptied his supper on the ground. After some walking around outside and after we y@rped for him, he was able to throw it all up which made him feel much better.
When we were teaching them the songs with motions, Gee chose two grandmas (as was his standard operating procedure) to come up and help us with the motions. He did the motions faster and faster. One of the grandmas was totally crazy. She had fried her brain on betel juice and wasn’t all there. But she was incredibly hilarious. She would do rough imitations of whatever Gee did and did all sorts of crazy moves with a very serious expression on her face. People were rolling in the aisles.
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