National Missionaries

(My Pastor is the tall guy in the middle)

This past week my church had our yearly missions conference. There were 8 national missionaries on Wednesday night. If you love missionaries, then you'd really love the nationals. Most of this group it was their first time being to the states. Bro. Noel and Bro. Rengifo had never spoken one word of English and in a months time, they were having general conversations with us. You really have to pay attention to what they are saying because the way they say their words are different. Their accents add to the confusion some time. *smile*

(Bro Walter, Amy, Jen, Me, Bro Andrew, Bro Lalvan, Jesse)

We started off the week with 2 missionaries: Bro. Walter, from Kenya, and Bro. Noel from the Philippines.
Sunday, Jennifer and I did an offertory with the piano and fiddle, I didn't think anything of it, but the missionaries did. Neither of them had ever heard a fiddle before. Bro Walter said that they have an instrument like it, but it has one string, and they play it at their side, not on their shoulder. Bro. Walter asked me if I was going to play it again. He didn't know what to call it, and couldn't remember what I said it was so he would just do the motion of me playing. So I promised I would play it again the next night.

(Bro. Noel, Me, Amy, Jennifer)

Monday night a couple more missionaries came in and the first thing they say to me is, 'your the one that plays the...' and they do the fiddle motion. My sister and I laughed because they all wanted to take a picture with the "fiddle and the sisters". So we had pictures of them holding the fiddle, trying to play it, me playing it and each of them laughing at the other. They were very sweet. Everyone standing at the back of the church were laughing at them because they all were wanting to hold it and act like they were playing it. You would have thought that we were some celebrities with all the pictures that were being taken. Then they were about to leave and they seen our Mom, one said, "There's the Mama" and they all had to go get pictures with her too.

Tuesday was the only night all the missionaries would be together at our church so I got a video of them all singing in their dialect. Sorry for the shaky video, I was sitting on the second row trying to record without a tripod.

In the video from left to right:

 Gula - Burma

Lalvan Tling Bawm - Bangladesh

Walter Andere - Kenya

Andrew Martey - Nigeria

Rengifo Ramos - Peru

Mhan Ramos - Philippines

Noel Letana - Philippines

Mickel Borigas - Philippines

Wednesday we only had 3 of the nationals in church. Bro. Rengifo from Peru can't speak much English so he told about his ministry and sang. Here is another video of just him singing.

Have a blessed day.
Bethany