Busy Weekend

This weekend was quite busy. On Friday, I went to church to help out with the youth group. They brought in a Christian band from Manzini, so I ran sound for their concert. They have a different philosophy on the importance of hearing the vocals over the music. So we had to change all the sound settings. It was interesting, but the concert seemed to go well and a lot of the kids who came enjoyed it.

On Saturday, I got up at 5:15 and we left for Johannesburg (hereafter, Joberg). My two small group leaders and two other guys from the group. We drove for about 3 and a half hours, and we stopped at McDonalds. I got real American french fries, and everything tastes the same here as it does in the US (if you think about it, it's a bit troubling, so don't).

After McDonalds, we went to an extreme sports park, full of circus-like things. There was a rock wall, trapeze, giant slip n' slide, tight rope, and one of those spinning rope ladders that require balance the whole way up. We had a great time, mostly laughing at each other as we failed spectacularly and numerous little children succeeded.

After that, we went to a big mall, walked around for a while, and had seafood. It was a good day, with good fellowship and a lot of fun.

Sunday I was up at 6:15 so that we could get to church and fix the sound system. We got it sounding good for worship again, which was rewarding. Then, after the second service (circa 1:30), some friends picked me up and we watched a movie and ate some delicious chicken before I went home and passed out.

Hope you have a good week,
-Ben

You sure?

The other night (Saturday), I was talking to a missionary friend here who had a rough week. We were talking about how rough things happen and it's pretty easy to get discouraged because it seems pretty major, especially when you don't have much of a support network and it feels like you're balancing on a very thin wire. Her trouble was mainly financial and administrative, and I talked about how I think God has been teaching me to rely on him and trust that he'll work things out. It's true, and he's worked many things out.

Anyway, at 2am on Sunday, only a half-dozen hours after we had been talking about this, I woke to hear what sounded like something was boiling over or getting ready to explode or something. So I shook off a bit of stupor and discovered that the rear tire on my motorcycle was rapidly deflating. So tonight I'll be taking the rear wheel off my motorcycle so I can try to get that fixed. Unfortunately, it looks like it's more complicated than taking the wheel off of a car.

Even though I'm not thrilled to have to fix this, and I don't like being without my mode of transportation, I do think that I've learned a lot about trusting. It hasn't always been a fun lesson, but a lot of the time here, I don't always know what's coming next. And I don't have a good plan for the next ten years of my life. But my time in Swaziland has turned out to be great for me, and I think I've learned that although I don't always know where I'm going, or what will happen, God does.

-Ben

Tragic Realizations

I generally think of myself as a good person, at least a decent one. That's probably why the Hunger Games intrigued me so much (just the books, the movie hasn't made it here yet), because I was thinking about what I would do in a situation where I would have to kill to preserve my own life.

As it turns out, you wouldn't have to put my life in danger to get me to act like an animal. On Thursday I went to the government offices to pick up my residence permit. First I had to wait in one line to get a reference number, then bring that to another office where they gave me the paper that is my permit. Then I had to wait in two other lines for two offices that stamp the permit. After an hour waiting in a dark hallway with a half-dozen other people, I was no longer behaving out of an ingrained sense of right and wrong. If someone had convinced me that all I had to do to finish everything was be the last man standing in that hallway, I probably would have pushed everyone to the ground. It was a sad realization.

Anyway, I now have my permit. Yesterday after work I helped out with sound for the youth group meeting. Tonight we have young adults, but I just attend that.

Hope all is well with you,
-Ben

And we're back

I hope everyone had a great Easter Weekend. Celebrating Easter here was a different experience, and I felt like we didn't make a very big deal about it. We did have a worship night on Saturday, and that included communion, which I had been missing very much. Sunday we had our typical two services (one in English, one in SiSwati). I stayed for both because I was on sound, but I spent the second service training an apprentice, so I was sitting second chair to deal with feedback loops and such. For some reason, the stage lights stayed off Saturday night, but worked Sunday morning. No one's really sure why.

So after a 4-day weekend (Monday is off here too), we're all back to work. Below are some pictures from the training last week.

Some farmers loading up on the sandwiches we made. This is tea time, approximately 11am. Lunch is at 1pm.

Pastor Daniel talking to one of the Ministry facilitators while the farmers are queuing for sandwiches.

Another government employee giving a presentation. We had presentations on budgets, vaccinations and feeding, biosecurity, marketing, etc.

Farmers being attentive. The feedback was very positive and I think it was a good thing to do. We'll see how much it helped performance, but I think it at least encouraged the farmers.

Good Holy Week

Well, our training finished up yesterday. It was a very good thing, and I think our farmers got a lot out of it. Most of the training was in SiSwati and wasn't for me, so I helped out as much as I could. It turns out that hosting an event means a lot more here than it does in the US. We were responsible for the farmers transportation up here, their tea break (we made sandwiches. We cut them into quarters, but I'm not sure why, because everyone took at least 4), and their lunches. I don't want to calculate how much it cost, but I made a number of grocery runs to keep us stocked. And Bonisile and I had an interesting conversation about what would happen in the US if a host provided generic tea and the guests demanded that they go to the store and get name-brand tea.

Right after work, I headed down to church for worship practice. We're doing a worship night on Saturday, and I'll be running sound. I spent the first hour at the top of a very tall ladder, turning off the strobe feature on the lights. But something in the system is fried, so they just stay on, whether the light board is set to on or off. But a short while into practice, our new pastor and his wife showed up. They basically asked me how to improve things. They're American, and I'm not sure how I feel about shipping American pastors to pastor an established church in Swaziland. Nevertheless, I am definitely a personal fan of theirs. I started making recommendations, mainly about sound. The church is basically in a concrete warehouse, with a metal roof. Terrible for acoustics, but the main problem is that the sound board had very little control. The drums are an electric set, but are controlled independently from the stage, and basically drown out everything else. That set off a figurative arms race, with everyone wanting themselves louder just so they could hear. Before it's done, 75% of the sound in the church comes from the monitors on the stage.

So we started changing things. I started talking and Pastor Adam just said, "Ok, let's do it." So now the drummer hears himself through headphones, and the sound board controls how much he comes through the speakers. Then I cut everyone else down to half volume, and now only a small portion comes through the monitors. The singers aren't very happy, because they don't like the sounds that are coming through the monitors. But we've assured them over and over that it sounds infinitely better from the rest of the sanctuary. My next step is to hide some foam panels behind the curtains on the stage so that the monitors don't reflect directly into the first row. We'll see how that goes, but I'm very hopeful that we're making positive changes.

Be blessed this Good Friday and Easter,
-Ben

Ministry Training

Those of you who read my blog daily may have noticed that I took a break during the latter half of last week. Most of what we were doing was preparing for this week's training by the Ministry of Agriculture. That meant printing out documents (the government here can't afford to do much printing) and organizing tea, biscuits, and lunches for the farmers. Apparently, if we host a training for them, we are expected to shoulder all costs for a fairly luxurious event. I'll try to write more about the training on Wednesday.

We are also trying to deal with the new VAT here. It's a 14% tax added at every step along the value chain. So prices everywhere are going up, which is a pain. It means that our farmers will be paying more for their chickens, so they'll need to charge more and pay taxes on their sales, and by the time our chickens get served, the government will probably make more than the farmers. If you're asking whether a 14% tax is really the best thing to do to a struggling economy, I would not want anyone to infer from my baffled state that an economist could not find a good reason to do something like that.

-Ben