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