Friday, August 27, 2010

Accidental Evangelism

While I (Michelle) was in Uganda, the Zanaki translators went to several villages to read some chapters aloud and get feedback on them. In one village, they had a different response than usual.

Shem, one of the translators, sat down and started reading a chapter from Luke (I actually don't know which one; it was either 10 or 11). After the first passage he looked up and was surprised to see everyone in the group frowning. He thought, "There must be something wrong with the Zanaki words we've used!"

Worridly, he continued reading. After another section he glanced at his audience again and saw them looking down at the ground and grimacing! Unable to wait, he asked them, "What do you think of this translation? Please, all feedback is helpful, even if it is negative. How is our word choice, our dialect in this?"

“It’s fine, going on reading,” they said, not offering much insight into their facial expressions. He continued with the chapter, and they still had grimaces, to his consternation.

He started asking them questions to see which things in the translation weren’t clear, and they contributed their thoughts and were helpful. However, about half of them said, “Oh, we’re not Christians, we don’t understand religion well, so maybe you don’t want our answers.”

Shem hastily encouraged them to participate, since answers from people who don’t know the Bible are often the most helpful. He assured them that this was not a test of knowledge, but him looking for help with the language. They stayed and listened to the chapters and gave their feedback about the translation.

At the end, he asked again why it was that they looked so serious when he was reading. This time, they answered him. Both the Christians and the non-Christians told him, “Those words of Jesus were convicting us! They burned our hearts as we listened; we know that just like the people in the parables, we need to repent from our sins. How could we smile when we are thinking about our sins and how we are not right with God?”

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Calvary Chapel Entebbe


This morning Andrew and I visited Calvary Chapel Entebbe. Our home church is Calvary Chapel Olympia (WA), I used to attend and we're supported by Calvary Chapel Langley (BC), Andrew used to attend Crossroads, a Calvary Chapel in Vancouver, WA, and once while on vacation with my parents, we visited a Calvary Chapel in Stone Mountain, GA. But this was our first time at a Calvary in Africa! I was quite curious how it'd be different than the others, although since it was also my first visit to a Ugandan church, it's maybe a little tricky to know exactly what things are different just because they are Ugandan.

The whole service was totally bilingual in English and Luganda. The songs were a mixture, often with one verse of the English songs translated into Luganda, and sometimes a whole song was Luganda or English. Everything spoken at the front of the church, from announcements to prayers to the sermon, was translated from English into Luganda. Most of the audience laughed more at jokes after they were translated, which indicated to me that even if some of the Ugandans didn't know Luganda and needed the English, most of them did. The usual pastor is American, but he was away today, so the Ugandan assistant pastor preached.

Overall, the church felt WAY more western/American than any church I've ever attended in Tanzanian. For example, the kids were out having Sunday School during the sermon part of the service. In Tanzania, they are in with the adults, and if there is Sunday School, it's during adult Sunday School time, not during the main sermon. Also, there were guitars, a drum set, and a keyboard played by someone who actually knew how to play a keyboard. However, I appreciated that there were also two Ugandan drums. But I've sure never seen a guitar or a "normal" drum set before in a Tanzanian church. I'm not sure if they are due to the American influence in the church or if that's more common in Uganda, but it was new for me in Africa, at least. It was kind of a comfortable mix of western and East African, in that the music sounded Ugandan, but they were songs I knew in English, just sang with Ugandan English pronunciation, and some fun Luganda songs mixed in. There were words projected onto the wall, a computer running things in the back, and little paper bulletins. Again, maybe other Ugandan churches have these things, but for me they were a nice reminder of some positive aspects of western churches. It's really handy to have words up on the front wall during worship!

A great little variation from other Calvarys was the Bibles they offered for people to borrow during the service. They were New Living Translation!!! Take that, you King James Version Calvarys of North America, Uganda is showing you up. The pastor taught from the New International Version, but distributed to all the congregants who needed one for the was the NLT, my personal favorite English translation. :-) Way to go, Calvary Chapel Entebbe!

My favorite part was seeing the dove painted on the wall. After all, what's a Calvary Chapel without a giant dove swooping down, looking like it's divebombing the pastor? This one was a bit more moderate in size than some other Calvary's doves, but it was holding it's own up there.

So, today we got church in English (and Luganda). The last time I heard a sermon in English was, well, hmmm... one week ago when I listened to a MP3 of Calvary Chapel Olympia, which I think was a sermon from like three years ago, but hey, the Word of the Lord is the same yesterday, today, and forever, right?

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Miscommunication: Frustration or Opportunity?

Tuesday was the day I started to come down with malaria symptoms. Through the morning my energy level took a dive, my head and tummy started to hurt, my muscles started to ache, and I lost my appetite for food (a rare thing for me). I tried to lay low during the Basic Bible Teaching workshop which was being held at the Lubwisi/Kwamba translation office, but when lunchtime came I felt obligated to tag along for the trip into town. It was our second day eating at the little restaurant there that served typical Western Ugandan food. There was one thing that sounded OK to eat. I wanted rice with a little bit of sauce over the top. That was all. After ordering, what I got was a huge portion of goat meat, a large portion of posho (a semi-solid, white, maize porridge), and a tiny bit of rice. I was annoyed. It was not the first time that my meal at a restaurant had been messed up, and it seemed they weren't even trying to listen to what I wanted. I also didn't feel we should have to pay for something we didn't want (the cost difference would have been about $1). I'm pretty sure I let my disgust show a little bit.

In contrast to my grumpy attitude, Timothy (the local Literacy/Scripture Use coordinator I had been working with) was sitting next to me and seemed to be taking it all in stride. He laughed, but didn't make a big deal about it with the servers. Then, all of a sudden, he disappeared outside. He later returned with a young motorcycle driver. He grabbed the food I wasn't going to eat and put it in front of the guy at the table next to ours. Then, some of the others in our group also started added the extra they weren't able to finish. Before long the guy realized he wouldn't be able to finish it all. He ran out and grabbed a friend to join him, and together they scarfed down a good meal.

This simple experience was a wake up call for me. There were a few ways I could have responded to the "non-ideal" situation. My choice was the wrong one. Timothy's was a great one!

Andrew

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Water


On Wednesday morning, they started working on our road, and cut off our water. The road is blocked; we have to go around a detour to get in and out of our house. Since we're in the part of the road that is blocked, we dodge around the "Road Closed" sign to get in and out. I hope they might actually be doing some serious work on the road, like making proper drainage ditches and paving it, but I'm trying to keep my hopes down, since they most likely won't be spending that much money on it. As a side note, when they were working on the road last week they didn't close the road, but had people drive under the arm of the big Cat machine that had a scoop at the end. I had a moment of panic - seriously, there was a huge yellow bulldozer thing on one side of the road, and it was scooping a giant ditch on the other side, and everyone was just waiting for a moment and then whizzing underneath while it was still working away! But I survived and the truck didn't get smashed or anything.

When we got home to discover that our water had been cut off on Wednesday evening, we made do with eating some leftovers and figured it would be back on the next day. Well, Thursday morning arrived with no water. Skipping showering for one day isn't that big of a deal; we just went to work kind of smelly and greasy. This is Africa, nobody notices too much if you're past due for showering, since you get kind of sweaty every day, anyway.

Thursday was supposed to be laundry day, but that obviously didn't happen. It was also the day for the vet to come give the cats their rabies shots. (Yes, vets make house calls in Tanzania for everything from shots to surgery.) Betsy, the sweety, tiny little girl cat, went wild and bit me pretty hard. I couldn't wash off the blood and clean my wound at home, though, because of the water issue. So, back to the office I went (going the long way around, which was getting kind of annoying by then), and washed my puncture there.

That night our water came back for about an hour, enough time for me to dart into the bathroom and shower, fill the water filter bucket, and make pizza for dinner. It went out again before I had time to do any dishes. The next day, Friday, was totally without water all day. We were starting to run low on our bucket of drinking water, hadn't flushed the toilet in over 24 hours, and Andrew hadn't showered for several days. We had some leftover pizza for dinner, at least, but we used our last two forks and last two plates for eating it. Pretty much every dish we had was stacked on the counter, waiting for water. We realized that Andrew needed some of his clothes for his Uganda trip, and so took a few pairs of trousers and shirts over to our friends the Nicholls' house, where they saved the day by doing a load for us in their washing machine.

Saturday morning I went running, as usual. This time, however, I packed along my shampoo and towel, and our friends the Hills' saved the day by letting me shower at their house. I think I smelled badly enough that they didn't need any convincing of the importance of some water! Back at home, Andrew used most of our final 1/2 bucket of water to clean up a bit. We were down to 1/4 of a 5 gallon bucket as our only water in the house.

Saturday afternoon was missionary fellowship, so we went there (held at our friends the Turners' house) and drank lots of water and used their facilities, which flushed wonderfully well. Upon arriving home we checked the water first thing, but no luck. However, about halfway through watching a movie that night, we heard the ping ping ping of water coming out of the bathroom faucet and landing in the metal soup pot we'd put under the tap! Hallelujah! We both leapt into action, unsure of how long the water was going to stay on this time. We flushed the toilet about three times, Andrew showered and filled the drinking water filter, and I washed dishes like a madwoman.

This morning we checked the water first thing - still on! Not sure if they'll turn it off again tomorrow to continue with road work or not, but at least we've had one beautiful watery day here.

Monday, August 2, 2010

"What's your name?" "Uh, I'm, um..."

How did "What is your name?" get to be such a difficult question? Both Andrew and I have found it tricky at times to know how to answer that one. And you yourself might have been confused at some point by wondering why we're using a different name than the one you know us by and might have wondered what is up.

Well, you see, I was Michelle Smith for a long time. It was pretty straightforward, except when there was another Michelle Smith around. Yeah, have you ever tried going to camp, the doctor, or church and had to clarify which Michelle Smith you were? That was my life until I went to Tanzania in July 2006.

Upon arrival, I discovered that Tanzanians couldn't pronounce the name Michelle. The i, ch, e, and l gave them trouble. Oh yes, and when they look at it written out, it looks an awful lot like 'mchele' to them, which means 'uncooked rice' in Swahili. I even had a man at the Kenya border look at my passport and announce "Michelle is not a name, it means rice!" and write out my Kenya visa for Frances, my middle name. So, thus the introduction of my new name: Misha.

Misha is a nice name - there aren't too many Mishas in the world, and it's really easy for Tanzanians to say and remember. For the sake of consistency, I had everyone call me Misha, my expatriate colleagues and Tanzanians alike. I was a Misha Smith in Tanzania and to all who knew me from Tanzania, and Michelle Smith to all who knew me from elsewhere. It worked pretty well, although I got confused at times when visiting North America after having been in Tanzania for a while and started hesitating when asked my name.

When I met Andrew, I first introduced myself to him as Michelle, since we were in Olympia. But then, when I realized that things might get serious, I asked him to call me Misha, unless we were with other people who already knew me, and then he'd better call me Michelle, or else they would be confused. The poor guy was kind of confused himself after that explanation!

So, Andrew's friends in North America call me Misha, by my friends call me Michelle. Yeah, that one can be tricky...

On Andrew's side, he was Andy until he went to college, at which point he became Andrew. I guess Andy Sandeen can start to sound a bit too much like Andy Sandy for comfort! So all of his family and pre-college friends call him Andy, but all of the college-era and after ones call him Andrew.

And then he came to Tanzania, where there is someone named Andre at our office. Because of the confusion, he goes by Sandeen with the Tanzanians at the office. For all the others here and for Tanzanians who are not at the office, he's Andrew. Yes, that does make it necessary to pause and think sometimes before answering "What is your husband's name?"

So, for example: to Andrew's family, we're Andy and Misha. To my family, we're Andrew and Michelle. To expat friends in Tanzania, we're Andrew and Misha. To the Tanzanians at the office, we're Sandeen and Misha.

Legally, as of last week, we're Andrew and Michelle Sandeen. After one year, I finally got my last name changed! But there sure are still a lot of things on which my name is still Michelle Smith... it takes a while to get it all straightened out!

Finally, we wish you to call us whatever you like from the list of above options. Sandeen, Andrew, or Andy; Michelle or Misha, choose your own adventure!