Friday June 29, 2001

We were told to expect the unexpected in our pre-briefing for our trip to India. Even before we left, we found out that we can't get on the Thailand to Calcutta flight on Monday, July 2. Instead, we will leave Bangkok on SUnday afternoon and we'll have to spend a night in CAlcutta. What does God have for us in Calcutta? We shall see. Also, we had planned to leave Siliguri on the overnight train Sunday night, July 15. Yesterday, I got an email that all they could get was 3rd class train tickets leaving SAturday, July 14. How will this affect our planned program and concert? I do not know. Please pray that God will provide some tickets for us or help us to adapt to whatever schedule He wills for us.

Saturday, June 30, 2001

We all arrived in Bangkok around midnight with no major problems except for late arrivals. Only Marshall had a problem when he spilled his cranberry juice all over his airplane seat and he arrived with pink sticky pants. Which were washed by our host, the Chen family.

Sunday, July 1, 2001

After a good night's rest, we all attended the Chinese church we sang in last year and witnessed 4 ladies getting baptised. We sang and then rushed to the airport after the service to catch our flight to Calcutta. When we got there, we found out that our flight had been delayed over 3.5 hours. Worse, the flight was over booked and we were not told to reconfirm our flight so there were no seats left. But our God is in control. We were all upgraded to business class for free and given free passes to the VIP lounge to enjoy free food and drinks! We had time there to pray as a group and hold our first group devotion. Truly our God is a God of good surprises.

Our plane for Calcutta finally showed up as we walked into the gate, we were searched twice (along w/ everyone else) and the stench of India filled the room. Our noses somewhat adjusted to the smell. God was slowly acclimatizing us to India. We took of 4 hours late and landed stifling heat and humidity. A crowd pushed and shoved their way to the head of the line to get through immigration quickly. They saw one man trying to cut in line. The immigration official took away his passport and made him the last one through. We found the ticketing agent waiting for us and he helped us checked into a local hotel, Host International, which takes only rupees (no dollars, no credit card) and settled in for the night. The taxis we took looked like 1940s cars. Everything felt like we were in a time warp from 50 years ago.

Monday, July 2, 2001

Darkness-everything in Calcutta is dimly lit. The rooms are so dark it’s hard to read. At daybreak, the sky was gray and it felt like satan has an oppressive hold on this country. Everyone we met was fighting for survival, everyone wanted to be tipped. The taxis agreed on a price and tried to increase the agreed rate when we got to the hotel. We didn’t get a divine appointment (yet) for our arriving in Calcutta early, but we did get a feel for the mad crowd pushing their way and a sense of darkness in the place. When we checked out, the hotel clerk of Host International accompanied us to the airport and waited while we change our American traveler’s check into rupees to pay for our hotel bill. On the drive to the airport, we found out that this clerk was a Christian, a first bright spot of our trip to Calcutta, and he even gave us a 25% discount on our hotel lodging cost.

We flew to Bagdogra with no problems. We were met at the airport by Daya Pradham, our FECA,I missionary in Sikkim, his eldest son, Samuel, and daughter, Agnes. We talked about the plans for the next 10 days and everything seems ready except we did not receive our Choral Praise Anthem books shipped here from LA over 2 months ago. So please pray that these books will arrive even as early as tomorrow.

Tuesday, July 3, 2001

Today, we had a good day. Unlike Calcutta, Siliguri is rather bright and sunny (and hot) or rainy. We checked out the conference ground, a Catholic pastor’s retreat in the morning. We then had devotions and photocopied some hymns and the anthem “Thou Art Worthy.” After a lot of rest, we headed to the site which is located about halfway back to the airport in Bagdogra. There were going to be 31 men and 9 women, at the “Systematic Choir Singing” seminar we were leading. We hope a few more local women would be joining us to balance the group out. We met this group for the first time at 4:30pm. They were quite young in their teens and early twenties, with a couple of older leaders, and they were eager and excited. They all had to pay 200 Rupees and finance their own transportation, some coming from several hundred miles away. So they were committed. They sang worship songs from the 80’s with great enthusiasm. We split them into several small groups and each of us “auditioned” them so we could place them into the four parts of the choir. We ended up with 5 sopranos, 5 altos, 17 tenors and 15 basses (more or less). We sang to them the Sikkim song Bessie Lo learned but changed the words to a “hello” chorus from her “goodbye” song, and talked about different styles of music while demonstrating polyphonic, homophonic, and spirituals to them. The class sessions were very warm (no AC) and humid. We all came back to the hotel enthusiastic and excited about the days ahead.

An answered prayer – Daya was able to get us train tickets leaving Bagdogra on Sunday night instead of Saturday so we can stick to our original travel plans. It appears that the seminar will end of Friday and we will be visiting Sikkim on Saturday and Sunday.

Wednesday, July 4, 2001

“Happy Independence Day – American Visitors” was a sign greeting us on the blackboard as we walked into the classroom this morning. We woke up before 6am, had devotions and breakfast at 7am, and left for the conference grounds at about 8:15am. Marshall first went through part I of the fundamental of singing; posture and breathing. Then we sang “Amazing Grace” in four parts and Anna taught them what notes meant and how to count. After lunch and a short break, we broke into sections and had separate parts practice “Amazing Grace,” “How Great Thou Art” and “Thou Art Worthy.” We then got together for group rehearsal and Mei Ling and Marshall led the devotion based on the hymn “Amazing Grace.” After dinner, we practiced for another hour and returned hot and exhausted to our hotel. It has been a long over 8 hours of training but wonderful day. We were happy and excited by having this opportunity to teach these students. This should be our schedule for the next 9 days, with maybe a slight variation on Sunday. Everyone is reasonably healthy, Becki and Josh had a sore throat which they gave Anna, but those two are getting better. Please continue to pray for us as we minister here in your behalf.

Thursday, July 5, 2001

We are settling into a routine of teaching and rehearsing. The days are long and especially warm and stuffy in the late afternoon. But the students are wonderful. They really learn quickly and work had in spite of the warm weather. Anna taught them about measures, time signatures, showed them the Grand Scale (she taught them the G and F cleft yesterday) and the names of all the notes (A, B, C, etc.) and told them to memorize their location on the scales. We added “Great |Is Thy Faithfulness” so by the end of the day, they could now sing “Amazing Grace”, “How Great Thou Art” in 4 parts and about 75% of “Thou Art Worthy”.

Since our activities ae becoming routine, let me report to you about some of the students and let you be inspired by them. I will not name names, so as not to endanger them. We met two young ladies from Bhutan, a neighboring state. It is forbidden to be a Christian there so they have to worship secretly in homes or cross the border to worship. These two girls came to learn music so they could return and start a music school. While it is illegal to teach Christ, they can tell about Him in there songs and music legally, so this is their very ambitious plan. Pray for them and the risks they will be taking just to communicate Christ to the children.

Friday, July 6, 2001

We added the first hard choral literature to their repertoire today, Dvorak’s “God Is My Shepherd”. It was difficult for them at first, because they were not used to the intervals, but by the end of the day, they had learned over half of it. We also taught them the hymn, “Blessed Assurance”, which by now was learned in no time. They are good learners! We also taught them the C-major scale, showed them the notes on both keyboard and guitar and also the different keys one could do the major scale. We then taught them about half steps and whole steps and tested them on their tonal memory. Marshall completed his basic vocal production teaching with a discourse about diction, singing vowels and enunciating consonants. Because they do not have an “eh” sound but an “ay”, we had to do a lot of correction on their diction and vowel sounds as we sang.

Anna is starting to feel a little sick. The long work hours here are making all of us tired, even though we are sleeping and eating well. Today, we heard one man share how he could attend this seminar only because one friend gave him 200 rupees for the conference fee and another friend gave him 250 rupees for transportation. Amazing! This is real dedication and commitment. We e-mailed FECA asking them to send us another two boxes of “Choral Praise” music. The music committee of FECA had donated two boxes of music and sent it via postal mail, but the mail is so unreliable it is likely lost or stolen and we desperately need music. So I requested more music to be shipped DHL and it is suppose to arrive before next Wednesday. Pray it will get here by Monday so we can save money not to Xerox more music. Please pray for Anna’s health, the timely arrival of music, the funds to pay for the extra copies, and the dear students here, over 43 of them.

Saturday, July 7, 2001

Anna is still not feeling well so she is staying back at the hotel to get extra rest and hopefully shake this cold. Meiring has taken over to teach Anna’s music theory today. It is good to have flexibility on a team. Today the students reviewed the major scale and can now identify quickly which keys have how many flats and sharps. The students seem pleased that they are now learning to sight sing and recognize intervals. Even those who had taken piano or violin previously say that our teaching is very well organized and helps them understand what they had learned before. The group meanwhile is learning Christianson’s “Lamb of God”, a German motet from the 16th century. Vision sang it and they loved it and are now learning how to sight read this music since it is slow and a good song for learning. The fact that they can now pick up a new piece of music, recognize what key, timing and count, and start to figure out the notes, has thrilled the students and us. They have also basically learned the Dvorak and all the hymns.

We are preparing notes to hand out to them as well as write up a final exam to give them so we can use it to evaluate how well our teaching is being assimilated. In addition, we are preparing a certificate to give them at the end of class. Daya has arranged for several churches in Siliguri to host a concert for us next Friday, after the last class. We then plan to visit Sikkim or Darjeeling, depending on the weather. Tomorrow, Sunday will be a Sabbath day for all of us. Anna has recovered well enough to go with Daya and the girls to buy an Indian outfit to wear to church tomorrow. Vision will attend one of the churches and probably sing while the students will be spread among 5 different churches in the city. Some of them will sing in Nepalese, but there are just not enough women for them to sing what we have been teaching them unless we join them and go as a whole group.

As you will be receiving this Sunday morning, please share what is happening with us to all the congregations and those praying for us. We are so blessed that we are here to meet these students who have given so much just to be here. They are bright, quick, responsive and a joy to teach, sitting through 8 hours or more of lessons a day. They love the Lord and their faith puts many of us to shame. Continue to pray for us that what we teach them, they can teach others (II Tim 2:2).

Sunday, July 8, 2001

We (Vision) went to Siliguri Church with Daya. That is the location for our concert Friday night. They meet in a hall which is normally part of a school. The room sits maybe a little over a hundred people. Worship there is very interesting. There is no song leader, the guitarist plays chords and whoever feels lead by the Holy Spirit starts to sing in a loud voice and all the rest join in. They don’t necessarily sing in the key play by the guitarist, so frequently, the congregation is singing something completely different from what the guitarist is playing. Daya said their singing is really shouting, but they do it enthusiastically and they make joyful noises to the Lord. Marshall and Meilin invited the Vision team and Daya to lunch. We then returned to the conference site where we had 2.5 hours of worship and testimony. One older man shared about how he had previously tried to learn music, all unsuccessfully. As a child, his father was a violinist and forbade him from touching his instrument. Later, he took singing lessons but it turned out that one of his teachers was a pedophile so he quit. A third time, it created jealousy among the church members, so he was initially very resistant about learning to read music, because “the devil had convinced him that it was impossible for him to learn.” But God has opened up his eyes, as he quoted the words from Amazing Grace, “I once was blind but now I see” and he is very grateful that we came and God is able to use us to enable him to read music.

Monday, July 9, 2001

We have been in Siliguri for one whole week now. We landed Monday afternoon, a week ago – it seems longer. Anna is better but Singer is down with a migraine. Last night, Becky stayed at the camp with the girls and tonight Christine is staying over. We gave the students a quiz today. One student got a perfect score and one missed part of the answer, and one of our Vision members missed two of the answers. But generally they seem to be learning quite well. We added the hymn “Just As I Am” and John Rutter’s “The Lord Bless You And Keep You,” quite a hard song to learn and sing. This will give us 5 hymns and 4 anthems to present at Friday’s concert, plus Vision will do a short program. We still haven’t received the Choral Praise but we look forward to getting it in a day or two.

Tuesday, July 10, 2001

They learned it! John Rutter’s “The Lord Bless You and Keep You” including the complicated amen at the end. They had no trouble learning “Just As| I AM” (the hymn). We did no xerox “Rev. 19” but wrote the parts out on the blackboard. By the end of the day, they could almost sing that too. They are now sounding like a choir. The softer parts of “Lamb of God” are wonderfully rendered, balanced and blended, even though (with Vision included), we have only 8 sopranos, 6 altos, 23 tenors and 16 basses. They have learned to sing together and make up for the fewer ladies and low bass notes. They have learned to listen to one another when they sing and pick up notes and dynamics from the other sections. No one sticks out anymore. We have a choir!

Daya explained to the students about FECAI and told them his vision for a choir called “Joshua Singers”. He names it this after the musicians who led the Israelites around Jericho, and it just so happened (God has a great sense of humor) the two guys we have here are named Joshua and Singer. Here are some of the feedback from the students about FECAI:

• “The plan that FECAI envisioned is excellent... the strategies that FECAI observes to spread its network into the interior villages by sending a missionary to these places is really nice.”
• “I feel God is using FECAI in an absolute perfect way. I’ll surely pray for your ministry and ask my church members to also do the same.”
• “I hope that FECAI will continue to carry out the follow up process after the training is over, and organize such training and concerts to encourage the youth.”
• “I would like to contribute to FECAI.”

Wednesday, July 11, 2001

We still haven’t received our music shipment, it was supposed to arrive today. Via internet we found out it arrived in Calcutta at 10am this morning. Hopefully we’ll get them tomorrow. We spent most of the time practicing, including the students learning to perform Vision’s “Growing Dreams” skit in Nepalese. All the music including “Revelation 19” are anchor pieces are now learned.

Here are some quotes from the students regarding the music training.

• “We got lots of inspiration from [this training] and we learned many things.”
• “The vision for Joshua Singers coincide with my vision of gospel for music, which I think would be an effective way to reach people of every age and class.”
• “We still have more talented guys in our place who couldn’t come. What I thought is we need this kind of choir singing with notation [in our towns].”
• “Getting introduced to different people have been a different feeling for me. Initially I hesitated talking to new people but now, I gradually [and overcoming] this weakness.”
• “Please arrange this kind of special training in our place.”
• “Because I have learned more things from this systematic choir singing, now I plan to teach others.”
• “We will definitely teach whatever we learn here to the youth of Jaigaon to increase the number of choir [numbers].”

Thursday, July 12, 2001

The music finally arrived! At 1:30pm, one day late, then one copy was badly damaged, water soaked and a couple others with minor damage. We gave the group their final exam today. We had hoped everyone would get at least half the points right, the lowest score was 25.5 out of 50 points. Of the 44 students, 8 {18%) scored between 45-50; 17 (39%) between 40-44.9; 9 (20%) between 35-39.9; 5 (11%) between 30-34.9; and 5 (11%) between 25-29.9. The average is 39.32. A few of the students can barely speak English and that could have contributed to the poor score. Since we now received the Choral Praise book after the exam, we started looking at some of the new music in there, amazingly, they could now sing most of the first anthem “I Will Sing Unto The Lord” in four parts. They were trilled to be able to do that and so were we. We even tried to read through “I Am” with less success, but it shows that they really did learn the basics of sight singing.

Here are some comments the students wrote in their test paper.

• “Earlier I couldn’t follow but lately I realized that… I [could] sing in staff notation (scored 46/50 in the final}.”
• “I really had fun and [it] was good for me to know more about music.”
• “This class has helped us very much. It has enabled us to read music through which we can share God’s word in the foothills of Himalayas.”
• “You all [Vision group] were very patient. We will never ever get teachers so sweet and caring.”
• “I wish I could spend most of my time with you people studying and going deeper. I also like to teach the illiterate people of music.”

Friday, July 13, 2001

We did a final practice of the songs for the concert on Friday night because we had extra time left we started to sing some of the other music in Choral Praise. They really do sing “I Will Sing Unto The Lord” quite well. We also read through “Sing Forth Rejoice,” “I Am” and “God Is My Refuge.” We reviewed the exam answers and tried to make sure they understood their mistakes on the wrong answers. After lunch and a time of resting, Daya hired a bus to take all the students to the Siliguri Church where we set up. Daya had also hired a sound system, so all that had to be setup in half an hour. We started the concert about 10 minutes late, but the auditorium was quite filled by then. The program went quite well. Daya tired to invite all the church leaders to come and they were quite surprised that we were able to learn all the songs in 10 days. There were a lot of request for more training in the future and promise of the church leaders to provide more students next time. After the concert, we all returned to the conference site and had a late dinner followed by the graduation ceremony. We were showered with gifts and mementoes of their thanks. Christine and Becki stayed overnight with the students because they couldn’t bear to leave them.

Saturday, July 14, 2001

After breakfast the students left to return to their homes by car, bus and whatever transportation there is. Daya’s son, Sunzoo (“Samuel”), drove Becki and Christine back to the hotel at around 10am and we all packed and got ready to leave for Darjeeling, the Indian Resort Town. Though it is only about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Siliguri, it took us 3 hours to get there because of the narrow mountain roads. When we got there, Sunzoo and Daya were already there. It was quite cook and very foggy, so we couldn’t appreciate the beautiful scenery. We just relaxed and walked around the town. Daya met a childhood friend of his who had recently become a believer also. Both men showed us several good shopping spots and Daya bought some Darjeeling tea for each of us to bring back to the States.

We had about an hour to debrief to share what we have learned during this training session. Some of the key points are: 1) in the future we should try to get at least 4 students from each church/locality/town (SATB); 2) students we had were extremely motivated and very quick learners; 3) most of us for the most part learned patience; 4) we weren’t sure how much we could teach them when we came, we just came by faith and God honored it, so we were extremely grateful.

Sunday, July 15, 2001

We stayed in a hotel which was quite inferior to the Siliguri’s Hotel Heritage. We were awaken at 11:45pm and 4:45am by the amplified sounds of the Muslim call to prayer. Just reminded us that we are really in a darkened land. We went to St. Andrews Anglican Church and attended their 9:30am service. We sang and shared for a brief period and had communion. Even though the church was beautifully built by the British, it was poorly attended, like most of the churches in England. We then went to a Nepali church for their 11:00 am service. This is a big contrast from the Anglican church. They had an enthusiastic group of young people who led worship before the service started, including two of the students from the class, Daniel and James. The church is quite packed with a nice age spread among the parishes. After we sang, we sneaked out before the sermon started and found another group of their young people outside making dumplings as a fundraiser. We ate about 150 of them for 400 Rupees (less than $10) and hurried to return to Silirugi. On the way back, we stopped to visit one of the missionaries, Aram, he is working at a very critical area where the Hindu’s were trying to built a temple about 10 kilometers North of Siliguri. What a lonely job he has, one lone Christian among hundreds of villages who have never heard of the gospel. There are many more like him that FECAI are supporting. They really need our prayers for they are doing strategic ministry. We bound the train for Calcutta and to our surprise, Daya also came with us. His second son, Abbu (“Amos”), had left earlier by bus to try to register for school and Daya’s meeting him there.

Monday, July 16, 2001

We arrived at Calcutta having slept pretty well on the train except for Christine who picked up a bad facial rash. We then took a cab to meet Jason Gimmer, our missionary at Calcutta from Glendale’s 11:30 service. Jason was dressed in a nice Indian suit. He took us to the top floor of Temple Tower where a Christian fellowship group meet, directly across from one of the largest Hindu temples. After eating some fruits and bread, we departed from the airport where we caught our flight to Thailand, almost 2 hours late again. Bangkok seemed like heaven, compared to Calcutta. And we really thank the Lord for the Chen family’s hospitality.

Tuesday, July 17, 2001

We flew on time to Manila and joined with shortly by Gloria who arrived from Singapore. We were met by some of Marshall’s friends and aunt and were driven to the YMCA where we’re staying.

The whole group got together at around 9:30pm where we had a good reunion. Wend to bed early since the next morning’s activity started early.