Lost In Translation

So this weekend was district conference. Every meeting is in Indonesian and they have a few missionaries who will translate into English for our branch. For once we were the ones with the headphones on! Tanner went to the leadership meeting without me because Andrew has had Jakarta stomach bug for the last 3 days and so I stayed home with him. I originally thought there would be an hour or two break between the leadership meeting and the adult session, but I forgot to check and I was wrong. Tanner texted me on his way home and I hurried and got ready so we could do a switcheroo. I hopped in a taxi, but I knew I was already going to be about 30 mins late. I walked in, and someone handed me the headphones. They didn’t work, and they told me I was sitting too far back to get a good reception. I didn’t want to make a scene trying to find a seat closer so I decided to just sit back and take it all in ‘local’ style.

I have been taking Indonesian language lessons, but there is a big difference here between learning the language and how people actually speak. I was just trying to pick out words here and there, but I was getting a little frustrated at how little I was actually picking up. Granted, I haven’t been learning ‘church’ vocabulary, but still. When the second to last speaker got up, I was all excited because he spoke very well and I was picking up all kinds of words. I could understand, “car, maid, little girl, hospital”, but I couldn’t get everything so I just started filling the blanks in my head with what I thought the story he was telling meant. I felt pretty good about it too, and after the session was over, I ran up to my friend and said “that second to last speaker was great, I think I understood a lot of what he was saying, it sounded like a GREAT story!” She looked at me as if I was nutso…and then she explained. Apparently the story had a VERY tragic ending, almost inappropriate to tell over the pulpit. In fact, she took her headphones off at times because she didn’t want to hear some of the details it was so tragic and sad. I was like whhhhaaaaaaat? Yeah, totally missed that one. Suffice it to say, my Bahasa Indonesia needs some work. Oh and I also thought that I would be able to understand an American speaking Bahasa better than the locals, but I couldn’t understand President Groberg any better. :-(

However, what was NOT lost in translation was the choir. They sang in Indonesian, but the melody was unmistakable. It was totally worth the effort to get there to hear a group of Indonesians (many very poor certainly by American standards) sing Count Your Blessings.

Chorus:

Berkat Tuhan mari hitunglah,
kau kan kagum oleh kasih-Nya
Berkat Tuhan mari hitunglah,
kau niscaya kagum oleh kasih-Nya