Pain in My Posterior

Today was spent in worship. The churches in both Karsa and Rapina (rop-i-nah) are beautiful facilities and places of worship in which Rein, the pastor, and the members can be quite proud.

Now for many of us, particularly those of us in the choir, the sermons are often a time to catch up on our sleep. With two services to attend today we should have had plenty of opportunity grab a nap. However, Estonian pastors are apparently very intelligent people and are either somewhat evil or simply downright mean. They have discovered that there is a particular angle of the seated body in combination with a sitting surface that measures "Very Hard" on the "Pew Hardness Scale" that makes slumber practically impossible. Even in services that are twice as long, because every spoken line, whether in English or Estonian, requires an interpreter, ones tormented body simply can not sleep. While very effective in promoting sleep deprivation, those subjected to this torture may be permanently afflicted with SRS (Sore Rear Syndrom) We will let you know upon our return.

Other than lack of sleep and sore posteriors the services were actually quite nice. The church members at both the church in Karsa and the church in Rapina welcomed us with joy and Christian love. Our morning service was at 11:00 AM at the church in Karsa, just 3 miles down the road from the Ahja Mission. The church, formerly a Russian Orthodox church, was consecrated as a Methodist church in 1990. It has all of the architectural features one would expect in a Russian Orthodox building. Callie and Becca sang twice during the service. They sang Cantate Domino before the old testament scripture reading and Children From the Heavenly King following the sermon. Casi provided the New Testament reading. Gregg gave a personal testimony following the the NT reading and Randy sang Great is Thy Faithfulness after Greg's testimony. We listened patiently as Maurice preached a sermon titled Joseph the Patient Sufferer which Rein intepreted for the 20 Estonians in attendance. Hymns were accompanied on guitar by Jana and Tauno, Tairi the cook´s son. Most hymns were somewhat difficult to sing because of our unfamiliarity with the hymns and the language difference. However, Estonian and English reverberated off of the plaster walls as we belted out What a Friend we have in Jesus. Larry presented a gift to the church in Karsa entitled Trail of honor. It represents the culture of Oklahoma and is the figure of an Indian pony with an American flag on one side and an Indian spear on the other. It includes the symbols of the 4 armed services in the U.S.

Following lunch we took the 45 minute drive for the worship service at the Methodist Church in Rapina. Typical of many Methodist churches in Estonia the Rapina church was once a home. The service was the same as at Karsa except Becca and Callie sang a third song, The Gift of Love, just before the closing hymn. The hymns were accompanied by a Zither. The accompanist recommended that we close the service with How Great Thou Art. I LOVE How Great Thou Art. The Americans in the service were at a severe disadvantage. Since this was a last minute addition to the service we did not have printed pages and the hymnals were all in Estonian. There are 5 versuses to How Great Thou Art. most of we Americans know all of the verses by heart except the last four. SOOoooooooo, we sang the first verse five times.

On the way back to the mission we stopped by Mooste Manor in Mooste (imagine that) Mooste Manor is very similar to the manor in Ahja mentioned in a previous post except the manor house and grounds have all been restored and the house converted into a school. Most of the roads between Rapina and Ahja are under repair and are unpaved. Some of us rode in a small ford van that was drawn to the mud holes like...well like a pig is drawn to the mud. On more than one occassion I thought we would have to slog knee deep in mud to push our coach. Jahn the driver obviously knew what he was doing because we did make it back to the Mission with nary a spot of mud on our shoes.

Tomorrow the real work at the Mission begins.

Be sure to check the pictures at the bottom of the page labeled Sunday July 13

I gots Pain in my Posterior

Randy Mac