We finally experienced the monsoon rains that are supposed to be blanketing this land this time of year on Monday night, the 10^th.  This city, which sits about 3000 feet above sea level, looks greener than either of the other two we’ve visited.

But the showers of blessing that began at our first stop farther north have continued without abatement here.  Let me share a few with you.

The first night of our meetings here several pastors from one of the districts led us in worship.  Three instruments were utilized, all of them percussion:  a set of tired drums, a tambourine, and two pairs of “finger cymbals.”

The singing was great, but the most interesting thing about the worship was the drummer.  He was a little boy named Shadrach.  His cadence was the same for every song, but that’s the way he’d been taught.

One of the men I’d taught two years ago is maintaining a school for 17 children.  He and his wife take orphaned and/or impoverished kids into their home to prepare them for the public school system by bringing them up to the third grade level.  In addition, this pastor takes children with him to the villages to help with the worship in his evangelistic endeavors.

Shadrach is just 8 years old, but he has blessed me in ways he’ll never understand.  He not only plays the drums, but he also sits quietly and meditatively through each message with absolutely no adult supervision.  And the messages are at least 60 minutes long (except for Tom’s and mine).

His posture in prayer should be copied by the kids in my own country, in my opinion.  Perhaps even by the adults.  In fact, when we were having our “burden-bearing” prayer time with the men, when they each sat in the chair in the center of the group and shared their concerns, when we all laid hands on them and prayed, he was right in there, placing his small appendage on the head of the subject of our intercessions.

I wish you could have observed this firsthand.  I know you’d have been as blessed as I.

Mrs. Clinton made the phrase “It takes a village to raise a child” popular a few years back.  In this culture, it seems to be so.  At least, it seems to be so with our pastors and their families.  The children at this retreat are public property.  O sure, their mamas see to their most intimate needs, but everyone else takes a hand in their general care.  Even the very young bachelor pastors can be seen holding a baby or toddler, obviously happy to do so.  And, when children are making noise in the meeting place it is not always the parents who take them out.  More than a few times I’ve seen others get up and remove the offenders.

The fact that noisy children are taken out of the meeting is a blessing all by itself!  The district leader who “chairs” the meetings will stop right in the middle of translating a phrase and point to the offenders, telling someone to shoo them outside.  This is another practice that I wish would become normal in the USA

Talk about being blessed – that hour and a half prayer time with the men was phenomenal.  After they realized that the thing with the chair in the center of the room was not a gimmick, after they sensed the sincerity of it, they took full advantage.  Man after man sat down there and expressed his concerns.  All laid hands and all prayed – all at once, and then with person wrapped it up each time.  The prayers were not short either, partly because I sense that it is part of the culture to be repetitious.

No matter – I was blessed.

We all have been.  And I suspect that today will be no different.

Oh, one other blessing.  Doug Shada, the president of our Berean Fellowship, actually ate some of the faire here at lunch…with his hands like the rest of us were doing.  And, I have photographic proof!