The Moth Who Stayed for a Day
In the last Sojourn I mentioned right at the end that I had
seen the five naked-eye planets on Thursday morning. I also mentioned that a
cloud occluded Jupiter shortly after seeing it. I worried because Jupiter
didn’t seem as bright as it should. My apologies; it wasn’t Jupiter. Two days
later, on Saturday morning, the sky was perfectly clear at 5:10 a.m., and I
went out again. This time Jupiter was clearly visible and as bright as I
remember Jupiter’s being, only it was further west than Spica, in Virgo, which
I had mistaken for Jupiter. As I correctly predicted, Venus and Mercury are
both moving very fast and were considerably closer to the horizon than two days
previously at the same time. They were also apparently much closer to each
other.
In Part 11 of these Sojourns
I told you about the task of getting and activating the FAMA Newsletter email address list. Between Friday and Sunday I got
all of them sent off and have only had about 4% of the addresses bounce. I have
no idea how rapidly email addresses are dropped or exchanged, but I think
that’s pretty good for any address list. In reply to the Newsletter we’ve had a number of offers to speak at the upcoming
reunion on the first weekend of June.
Wildlife is not very impressive in our part of Mada. I was
asked on the phone recently if there were any Zebra near us. Well, in spite of
the Madagascar movies, there are no African big game of any kind. The Fossa is
the largest carnivore on the island, and it is a kind of mongoose and not much
bigger than a big cat. However we have beautiful moths and butterflies. I love
stalking and taking pictures of butterflies, but they tend to be very
uncooperative. I am including a picture of a really spectacular moth that sat on
our door for about a day and two pictures of a small chameleon. With tail the
chameleon probably was no longer than about 8 inches (20cm). It got the black
patterns when it felt agitated or threatened.
Our Chameleon Visitor, Aggravated and Calm
A week ago all of the churches in Madagascar had a weeklong
celebration of women in the church. The week culminated in Pam’s preaching at
the Sambaina church. This past weekend they had training sessions for all church
officers and their spouses. Mada society is very much a male dominated society,
and the officers in the church tend to follow societal trends. So when I write
“spouses,” you should probably read “wives.” Meetings in our church ran from
Friday evening all the way through Sunday noon. They went fairly late into the
night on both nights and started again at seven o’clock in the mornings. All of
our students were asked to go and meet in a classroom block for Sabbath School
and church. Our church was packed almost to the bursting point.
People from the other churches in the area packed the pews
so tightly that they must have had a hard time breathing! In America people
tend to sit in the pews with a space between each person. People don’t sit
against each other unless they are in a romantic relationship. So I find it
interesting to sit with bodies, arms, and legs right up against mine. I almost
experience a bit of claustrophobia.
Crowded Church
The church organization has conferences made up of a number
of church districts. Each district is made up of individual churches. There is
a district pastor who is in charge of each district, and then each local pastor
is in charge of several churches, unless the church is large--like the U A Z
church which has its own pastor. Pastors are all on the conference payroll.
Each church then has at least one “elder” or more where the church is larger.
Elders are elected from the church members and must meet the strict
requirements laid out for a “bishop” in 1 Timothy 3. Adventists have broadened
the criteria in 1 Timothy to include both women and men as elders. All of the
elders from our district sat in the front three rows of the church for this
special meeting. There were no women elders, so I deduced that Mada still sticks
closely to the criterion that the elder must “be the husband of one wife.” As
such an elder cannot be a woman. We had one, newly elected, elder from our
church. So there was a special ordination service for him in which all the
pastors and elders present participated. They also had a deacon ordination and
a dedication of 10 babies.
Dedicating 10 Babies
Sylvia and I went to the UAZ church as usual. Mr. Tahina
translated for us from Malagasy into English. He did the best job of
translating that we have had since our arrival two-and-a-half months ago.
Usually all we get are some rather disconnected phrases and sentences that we
have to try and piece together to make out what was actually being said. Mr.
Tahina kept right up with the speakers.
Our district pastor preached the sermon, actually a charge
to the elders. I have never, knowingly, laid eyes on him before, but he seemed
to command a huge amount of deference and respect. The fact that the
translation was so good caused me a certain amount of distress. Let me
summarize what I remember from his charge.
He chose Psalm 23 as his text for the charge. In Malagasy
the first verse starts out “Jehovah” is my shepherd. The King James Version of
our Bible starts out “The LORD is my shepherd,” indicating that the Hebrew
Bible uses the sacred Tetragramaton,
Yahweh, as God’s extremely holy name as being our shepherd. Then the
pastor launched into a charge to the 31 elders (Sylvia counted them). “You are
the shepherd.” You must cause the people to lie down in truth filled, green
pastures. You must prepare a table of good food for the people. Your rod must
guide the people into paths of righteousness.
31 Elders from
Churches in Our District
I felt prickles run up and down the back of my neck. If I
had had any hair, I’m sure it would have been standing on end. Was this
district pastor saying that these elders must be God to their churches? Or was
this simply blasphemy? At the time I felt it was blasphemy. I almost felt like
I should get up and leave before the Lord struck us all dead.
But, of course, the district pastor went on and on. He had
the audience with him by this time by using the time worn method which essentially
is “If you agree with me say ‘amen!’” There was a rather lame “amen.” “Do you
really mean it? Say ‘Amen!’ louder.” He soon had the audience literally
shouting “Amen!” He used it several times to keep them with him. It seems to be
a common method in the meetings I’ve been to in Mada to elicit crowd response
by getting them to shout a phrase, whether it is “Amen!” or some other mantra.
He encouraged the elders to have personal devotions: “just
you and your Bible. Of course you have family worship, and prayer meeting, and
attend church. But that is not enough! You must spend at least 3 or 4 hours a
week alone with your Bible.” Three or more hours of personal time with our
Bibles would be good for all of us. When it is dictated it and not freely entered
into, I’m not sure how much good it will do.
“You must listen to the news (this may have been un
unfortunate translation) from the General Conference as you receive it on the
Internet and as it is passed down to you by your Division , and your Union Conference,
and your Conference and your District Pastor (meaning himself).” Somehow he
left out “and your Local Pastor,” if I remember right. But that may be a glitch
in my memory, or the translator had to hurry to keep up with the relentless
flow of words.
Later they had all the elders stand in a line in front of
us. That’s when Sylvia counted 31 elders. I looked at them and believe that
indeed many of them are men of God. By the way a number of them were dressed, I’m sure that they don’t have electricity,
running water, or indoor plumbing in their homes, let along the Internet to
receive word from the GC.
A Volunteer (like us!) Easter Lily in our Front Yard
What distressed me in this long set of injunctions for the
elders was that there was not a single mention or even an allusion to the
glorious hope we have in the soon coming of Jesus. Not once did he mention the
love of Christ and His marvelous grace, without which we are “of all men most
miserable.” It seems that they were to stay abreast of all the promotional
programs dreamed up the various church administrative bodies, but they can
forget the simple grace of Jesus Christ which is our only hope. Of course, I’m
sure he didn’t mean that, but I did notice that the elders sat there stunned.
As they stood in front of us afterward, they still looked stunned and showed no
sign of the joy of salvation.
Zandritiana (foreground) Who Played, by Ear, for Sylvia to Sing
Afterwards the visitors from the dozen or so churches in the
district spread their blankets or sheets on the university’s extensive lawns
and ate their lunches. We hung around for a half hour or so at the church so
Sylvia could practice singing the Lord’s Prayer with a student accompanist, Zandritiana, who
is a very able pianist. Pam had to do a spouse training meeting as part of the special
district meeting and asked Sylvia to sing the Lord’s Prayer for it.
Lily opening and as it looked after the rain on the same day
The next meeting was to start at 2:00 p.m. We walked home,
and as we got within a couple hundred yards or meters of home, large drops of
rain began to hit us--not enough to get us wet, just enough to warn us that
more was coming. By 1:30 the beautiful blue sky of the morning had given away
to grey clouds and extremely heavy rain. We got over an inch (25mm) of rain in
the next hour. A lovely lily that was just opening up that morning in our front
yard was beaten almost beyond recognition. Hopefully someone got the church
unlocked and opened so the people could take refuge inside! On Sunday we got
another pounding rain with over an inch-and-a-quarter of rain (30mm). Some have
suggested we must be on the edge of a cyclone. Who knows? We have no source of
news except what we can ferret out of a very moody and reluctant Internet.
The previous day, Friday, we went to town with Pam and
Gideon. They were scouting out conference rooms. They found one in Le Royal
Palace (or was it Le Palace Royal?) and we chose to eat lunch there. We ordered
two medium vege pizzas, two curried vegetables with eggs and four juice drinks.
Then the waiter returned, looking very embarrassed, and told us that they had
run out of rice: Would we like spaghetti instead? Realize that it is almost
impossible in Mada to eat without rice. It is eaten in copious quantities at every
meal, three times a day. I chided the waiter good naturedly. So he went and
placed our order. He came back a few minutes later and even more shame-facedly confessed
that they had no eggs. Could they substitute extra cheese on the spaghetti instead?
The standard exclamation at this point is “Welcome to Madagascar!” usually
voiced by Gideon. The food turned out to be excellent—the best I’ve eaten when
we have eaten out. And the whole meal came for less than $20 for the 4 of us.
On Monday we had the usual chapel just before lunch. It was
a special chapel this time. Madam Noée, head of the Language Department and my
immediate boss and our neighbor who lives in the other half of our duplex,
displayed two trophies the students won down at the English Drama Contest in
Antsirabe a couple weeks ago.
Madame Noée, English Dept. Chair and Trophies Won at Drama Contest, Antsirabe
In addition, Gideon, our university president, had the high
officials from church and state out for groundbreaking for the new student
center for the university. This has been sorely needed. A large percentage of
our students commute from nearby towns. This will give them a place to study
and rest on campus in rain or cold. It will provide a cafeteria and a gymnasium
and a large meeting hall. This will be larger than our church, so it will
accommodate more students as the size of the student body increases.
Ground Breaking for New Student Center
I walked around town (the third largest city in Mada) with
Gideon looking for a new battery for his Samsung phone. We found dozens of
Samsung batteries none of which fit his phone. You have to wonder what kind of
engineers they have at Samsung. By the end of the afternoon, I had begun to
applaud Apple’s multi-billion dollar lawsuit against Samsung!
#MADAGASCAR, #UAZ, #MALAGASY, #PREACHING, #CHURCHORGANIZATION,
#PLANETS, #EATINGOUT, #CELLPHONE, #RAIN,
#GRACE, #TRANSLATION, #SALVATIONBYWORKS, #CHAMELEON, #MOTH, #TROPHY, #LILY, #EASTERLILY
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