I took piano lessons. I think I was in about the third grade. And I believe I can hold a tune fairly well. But me teaching a group of 30 Honduran kids a new song in children’s church is apparently pretty hysterical if you speak with my husband. Now he gives the whole back story of an unrelated event when we were first married involving a lost remote control and a fairly “blonde” moment- yeah I have those though I tell people blonde jokes are really about decided blondes (the ones who decided to be blonde with a bottle of peroxide). Back on track.
Sunday I made the mistake of choosing not one, but two new songs for children’s church. We were teaching about Abraham and God’s timing and honestly the game idea wasn’t going to work with 30 kids in a small space-so I adapted and thought teaching Father Abraham fit pretty well with a game-lots of movement right. My first clue should have been when I asked Richard if Honduran kids might know the song and he said, “if they’ve been to school.” Ok, does that mean public school or here at Pinares? I asked for clarification and he told me, “at school here at Pinares.” Well, they haven’t been here, but certainly it can’t be that hard to figure out the words and teach it. The internet is my friend. Of course when you look up songs you should make sure they’ve not been adjusted by the Catholic church when translated into Spanish, or that a gringo hasn’t mangled the translation. Our co -teachers adjusted what I found and I wrote it out on posterboard. I found my second song in the hymnal-or so I thought.
When I got up to teach a VERY simple children’s song-goodness it only has 4 words in the whole thing- I apparently gave a very complicated explanation of how everyone was going to stand for their part. And I used the word “gracias” in place of “gloria” because I was a little flustered with the confused looks. Jorge, one of our co-leaders had decided to help and was singing a completely different tune, composed on the spot and in constant change. This really wasn’t helping. Apparently that combined with my dacing back and forth between the two groups of kids belting out the song hit dear hubby as particularly funny. But he had the grace to quietly correct my grammar and waited to laugh until we were home. Looking back, it really was pretty funny. And we made it through another week with 30 lively kids who enjoyed church.
Later as I was doing a Revelation study with my TN ladies I can hear, “quick, before Mommy finishes her Bible study” in the background. Yep, that’s dangerous. Just what are they up to? I came out and they had cleaned up the kitchen and front room because they wanted to have a superbowl party. They’d also ordered enough pizza for a brigade so we invited our friends just back from Peru to help us eat it.
And another fun church event. We passed out our directories. Everyone was amazed to actually have them in their hands. Harold found Freilin ( a young mute man) to help him pass them out as he wasn’t feeling well. Freilin loved the challenge of finding folks by their picture and giving them their photo and directory ( we also printed a family 5×7 for everyone).
All in all it was a good day.