We attended a service at a more rural church Thursday afternoon. Lester preached (and I followed some of it!! Immersion is a great thing) and Jessica did a few stories for the young kids.

We borrowed a guitar from one of Doña Norma’s neighbours and took it along. It was just barely playable, but we really enjoyed singing for them, and they asked us for an encore which we happily sung. Lester and Darlene came up to sing with Dorothy and I, whic was wonderful. They’re Mennonite, which means that with no practice and right off the tops of their heads we had 4 part harmony. It was a joy to be a part of.

This church doesn’t even have any doors or windows, just a set of 4 walls with doors and windows cut and a tin roof, but it was full of happy, passionate people. We were served a glass of ice cold coke and a pack of cookies afterwards, which was quite a feast to them (no one else got anything just us. We managed to drink enought to be polite and give the rest away to the kids of the congregation who were happy to help us finish it.

After the service, and old man came up to me and thanked me for playing and sked me if he could see my guitar. I’m talking old. His face was like an old shoe, and he was wearing jeans and a cowboy dress shirt, and a patched white cowboy hat with the edges rolled up tight. He said he hadn’t touched a guitar in 40 years because he couldn’t afford one. He sat down, pushed his cowboy hat back on his head and proceeded to play a finger-picked song fit for any concert hall. I was embarrassed to have complained about the guitar after hearing what amazing things he pulled out of it. He told me he had throat cancer and couldn’t sing anymore, and that the doctors told him he would die right away, a year ago.

While he was talking, his fingers sought the fretboard again and his hoarse whispery voice just faded out in mid-sentence as another song came over him. I watched in awe.

He smiled a big smile, thanked me for letting him play again, and then slowly stood up and shuffled off into the church to get a drink.

Thank you Lord for this reminder that these aren’t poor people, or mission opportunities, these are people. People with stories and lives and loves and dreams and pasts and futures.

Your people, Lord. Bless them.

March 19th

All day working today. More digging and still more digging. It seems strange, but the work patterns are completely different here. Do one job, finish, then plan the next. The problem is that often the jobs intersect.

Dig a trench, put a pipe in it, then fill it in. Okay, next job is to T a pipe to that one, so dig it up and do that but leave the dirt out this time. Now we need to put a trap right there under the dirt pile so shovel the pile over here then use the pick to break up the brand new concrete floor to lay the pipe then fill it in so we can patch the concrete.

We had the toilets all in and ready to put the floor on top when they decided to move the toilets.

I know I can’t extrapolate too far past this one job, but it seems that labour is so cheap that doing things eficiently really isn’t a priority. If a hole needs to be dug, then we dig a hole. We’ve got time.

According to Lester, it applies to government too. Getting Dennis’ body out of the country has been an administrative nightmare for him, with people changing their minds about what needs to be done, announcing things last minute, and taking vacation rather than signing vital papers.

I’m getting quite good at just smiling and nodding and starting to dig, but I knwo I’ve seen that rock there at least once before. I call him Freddy, and I’m pretty sure I’ll see him again before this is all done.

Someone commented about my “vacation”, and how upbeat I seem.

For some reason that upset me. I’ve been trying to keep the tone in these posts pretty light but informative, and to use some humour to break up an intense experience. So, if it seems fun or vacation-like it’s because I choose to document:

• playing 2-headed soccer and laughing with the kids rather instead of how the 11 year old boy on my back is lighter than my 7 year old because of a lifetime of malnutrition.
• how much I enjoy the truck rides instead of the kids in ripped tshirts and old underwear sitting in front of burning piles of garbage in the dirt yard of their rusted tin shack with large rocks holding the roof on that we pass as we drive.
• the interesting and rustic cane sugar processing facilitythast we visited instead of all 12 members of a family working 14 hour days over dangerous steam driven safety-guard-less cane crushers and van-sized boiling vats of syrup or hauling hollowed out trees filled with cooling sugar just to keep their land
• how my friend Roger, for whom I just bought shoes because he can’t afford to replace his one-strap-left-each sandals is having yet another baby in April and I just can’t decide if I’m elated, angry or depressed about it.
• how colorful and bright everything is instead of the cesspool of corporate branding on every available surface that makes me embarrassed to be part of the culture that is exploiting these people, and the recycling of old roadsigns and political posters as doors and wall repair materials on shacks with still more poorly dressed hungry kids out front
• handing out food and candy and shoes to happy thankful people rather than people throwing away money that was given to start a business to get them out of the slum, on alcohol
• the kids running and playing soccer and laughing and shouting rather than handing in notes from parents saying the kids can’t go to school because they can’t afford a pencil, or showing up to the site with sores that have been open and running for a week, or showing up with one and a half shoes, or our having to send little girls home to suspected abusive fathers every night
• the 50 kids that we can touch rather than the thousands in similar or worse situations within just 2 miles of this one tiny village in a huge country in a massive world that is mostly far more like this place than it is like the place where I come from.
• how tasty the food and juice and fruit is and how Doña Norma is trying to fatten me up rather than about how the kids will literally fight to bloody over a pack of 6 stale Ritz crackers or a sucker.

Having a Wonderful Time! Wish You Were Here!

We went to our first church service this afternoon, at the church that Willow Lake supports. Dorothy pointed out the guitar that the McInnes’ had bought, in the hands of a young teen who was comping on a simple chord pattern as we arrived. There were 40 or 50 people in attendance and we were very warmly received.

Music was played by the young man on the guitar and he did very well. Aparrently he was picking it up by watching someone else who knew how to play. It was impressive.

The teens leading singing had a bit of a hard time picking up the right key for the first few lines of each song, but a few lines in we were all praising together. When it came our turn to sing, I took a minute to tune the guitar (it was in need). First string, fine. Second string, fine. Third string, no problem. The fourth string, however, wasn’t tuning and the knob felt mushy. No matter which way I turned it, not much seemed to be happening. (That should have been my first clue but I was so nervous I missed it. Bonus points if you’ve figured it out already. See the bottom of the post). What was going through my head was “Oh no, the gears in the tuner are shot.”

One last turn and…. SNAP. I broke on of the precious few strings that they have. I felt about an inch tall, like such a heel. I thought this wouldn’t be too big of a problem for our songs, I’ve played minus a string before, we can survive this and get things fixed right away. I stood beside Dorothy and strummed and… the lowest 3 strings were in semi-tune, but the bottom two were nowhere near. So, in mid intro I switched from playing the song with full chords and a capo on the second fret to no capo, transposing in my head on the fly playing punk power chords on the bottom 3 strings. We picked out root notes and managed to sing just fine, but it wasn’t my finest moment, muscially speaking, and THEN I had to face the gracious music team to give them their instrument back.

Explanation: He had strung the guitar improperly, so 2 of the tuners were swapped (top row: 6 5 4 Bottom Row: 1 3 2) so I was cranking the wrong tuner, and BOING. Arg.

March 18

A punch-drunk sort of morning. Lester (on far too little sleep) taking multiple phone calls in both languages and heading to do still more paperwork to try to get Dennis’ body home to Canada.

A memorial service was held in the dining hall that was painted by Dennis and the rest of the group the day before. They brought in dozens of chairs and had a musician playing an electronic keyboard and a lady singing before the service and leading hymns. A large table had a picture of Dennis and lots of fresh flowers.

I was asked to take pictures to send to the family which I was glad to do. Keeping busy meant I wasn’t thinking too much about it. The service started with some singing and readings. Dorothy came up behind my chair and asked if I was videoing the service or just taking photos. I nearly slapped my head in frustration. My camera card was full enough of photos that I hadn’t saved anywhere else. If I had preparped and thought ahead I could have video taped the entire service to send to his family. As it was I managed to capture pieces of various parts to give them an idea of what it was like. Darlene took notes of what readings and the content of themessage was.

2 special things stuck out:

• The day before, Dennis had given a hat to a girl in exchange for a handful of flowers. He liked to trade rather than just give things away. He said it helped them feel better about themselves. The girl, still wearing her new black bucket hat with CANADA across the front, came down the aisle and put a new bunch of flowers on the table. People were openly crying when she appeared.
• Nicholas was very broken up. He had a difficult time finishing the Bible reading and his wife helped him finish reading a poem that he had written titled “47 Hours to Love”. I was a beautiful, heart-rending poem about how he had known Dennis all of 47 hours, yet he had a friend, a co-worker and a Christian brother that he loved and that brother was now with God and that he missed him. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Afterwards all of the pastors from the area spent some time praying over all of us and then a reception line of sorts started. People came to offer hugs, tears and smiles and condolences. It felt a bit odd being part of it having really known Dennis for all of 2 days, but the crying and the hugs helped.

47 hours really was enough.