This morning we went to village church. Video below, notice the use of
a laptop during the sermon... this church was actually one of the nicest
village churches I've ever been too.
After the worship music, the pastor said, in Tok Pisin "If this is your
first time here, and you've come to do some work, please stand up and
tell us about your work."
Now I always expect this type of this may happen. As a white man
representing my organization, it happens frequently. However I was
being FAR too literal when he said 'if you've come to do work, tell us
about your work.' Because I assumed he meant, if you're one of the
people who have come for 2-3 weeks to do some work, please tell us about it.
But I was coming from the perspective "I live here. I didn't come as a
team to do work."
So I stayed quiet.
There happened to be plenty of teams there this sunday, so one by one
they stood up and introduced themselves and what they were here to do.
The pastor started looking at me and kept saying 'no one else? anyone
else?' So the man who led us to the church, the school principle stood
up and introduced himself, his family and the man we had escorted to the
church. So I figured that included us, and was happy that the pastor
stopped looking at me.
People kept introducing themselves, lots of first timers this Sunday.
And still Pastor Willie kept looking at me saying "anyone else?
anyone?... no one else?"
and even my wife looked at me and I suppose I was being dense, I
responded across the aisle to her (because the women were sitting on the
left side of the church and the men on the right), I responded with a
silent lipping of 'don't worry about it, it's covered.' type of thing.
Finally the pastor, looking RIGHT at me said,
"And also with us is our EC-Chair... I mean EC Secretary from SIL" which
was me.
Suddenly I realized 'DOH! I'm not the audio recording guy no one has
heard of, apparently I'm the huge white guy everyone knows, and the
pastor knew, and he wanted me to stand up.... and introduce myself as
the EC Secretary.'
Woops!
I hadn't even thought of the EC position as a position of stature or
even of any kind of familiarity with anyone. So had I stood up earlier
I wouldn't even have mentioned the EC position, I would have many said I
record Scripture into Audio.
But, at the pastors prompting I stood up and gave the world's fastest
tok pisin introduction. "Hi, I'm Chad, I'm here with my wife and 2
children, thanks for having us here, we're happy to be here."
and that was it.
And after sitting down I thought 'man, did I just really mess up some
valley relationship opportunity?'
So I spent some time after the church mingling, and thanking people and
introducing myself and shaking hands.
Despite that awkward moment, it was the most enjoyable village church
experience I've had to date.
