Church out at "The Land"

Since arriving at "The Land" we have become more and more involved in the little church here. It has between 20 to 30 people in it. I remember one sabbath morning I walked in and was immediately asked to play the piano. Someone had let the secret out. They have a rinky-dink, out-of-tune piano that looks and plays like it should be in one of the small hidden rooms in my church. Since they asked me to play, I´ve spent all my Saturdays sitting at the piano. It´s been a fun, and yet a little stressful, experience because it´s quite a bit different than what I´m used to. I go in for sabbath school and just go straight to the piano. I have no clue what they want me to play until they say it from the pulpit. Thankfully I am starting to understand numbers in Spanish pretty well so I can at least find the hymn they want to sing. It´s pretty much assumed that we sing all verses every time. That clears up some confusion. The hymns they have are different than those in English. We either don´t have the song at all in our hymnal, or the notes are slightly different to make the words fit correctly. Either way, I´m not used to any of the songs. But we begin anyways and the fun starts. I play an intro and usually they know when to come in, but on occassion I have to play a couple of intros before they start. Once a few people begin singing the others join in. The people don´t know how to read music, and they don´t have music to read anyways. So throughout the years they have kind of passed on the melodies and made their own variations and tempos. So as I´m trying to figure out the right notes to play I am listening to the loud lady in the back that is singing entirely off key and changing speeds randomly to adapt to how they sing the song. Quarter notes become whole notes and C´s become D´s. Finally the song ends and the voices kind of trickle away. After a few hymns, we might have, what seems to me, a spontaneous special music. Someone will hand me a piece of music and ask me to accompany them. A new Peruvian guy, Adan, has come back to Peru from the states. He brought random sheet music with him. So they put the music in front of me and we begin making a joyful noise. I poke out the random notes that I sight read, often hitting a few wrong ones along the way. But the truth is, it doesn´t make that much difference because the piano is so far out of tune anyways. Usually by the third verse I´ve got the song down just as it comes to a close. Afterwards we have our lesson, which has been on Ecclesiastes this quarter. I never know when I´m gonna play next so I just stay at the bench and pretend to listen even though I don´t understand much of what´s being said. Finally Sabbath School ends with another hymn. It begins all over again with church. In the States that would be the end of it. Not here though. There are still two more programs on sabbath. A program led by youth and then one to close out the sabbath. Let´s just say by sundown I´m more than ready to leave the piano.

As much of a pain as it may be for me, I do have fun with it and the people love it. I was recently talking with a couple of the church memebers, Jose and Oswaldo. They were incredibly appreciative of me playing the piano. They said that nobody else in the church knows how to play the piano. It´s just been sitting their for a long time. Now that I´m playing they are able to learn songs in the hymnal that they had never known before. Even though the music is far from CD worthy, the people here love to sing. Occassionaly as I work during the week I pass by where Oswaldo sells his sugar cane juice on the side of the road. He will be sitting there with a hymnal in hand; singing in different keys at random tempos, yet the whole time doing it to praise God.