First Chinese meeting!

On Sunday, January 3, we finally reached the moment we had been waiting for....

As a Chinese pre-group, of course we have had language classes as well as preaching. But this day was particularly special....

Yes, I am referring to our FIRST EVER CHINESE MEETING!

As I mentioned in previous posts, this was to be a video public talk. During December our pre-group distributed a special invitation to Chinese people in the city of Kigali. Out of 100 invitations, 95 were distributed.

But, before revealing how the meeting turned out that day, let me describe what took place the day before, which happened to be the wedding introduction described in the previous post.

We had planned to borrow a TV screen from Brother Zimulinda, who was the father of the bride. However, I had not tested the screen until Saturday, the day before the Chinese meeting, because I figured that we would be at his house anyway for the introduction. I had the public talk on a file on a flash drive, which I wanted to test on his TV to make sure everything worked properly, especially the sound quality. It should have only taken a few minutes to do the test.

However, I can tell you this in hindsight—a wedding introduction is not the best occasion to test a TV screen. Especially since the TV sat in a room where guests were filing in and out and also where they were taking pictures of the wedding party.

But earlier that afternoon, I was bending over to wash my hands in a pail of water when the flash drive fell out of my shirt pocket and into the water. (I had just spilled beer all over my dress shoes a few minutes earlier. This was not my day.)

So when we finally just took it upon ourselves during a break in the action to plug in the TV and insert the flash drive, the file wasn't there. Was this because the file got wiped out when it fell in water? Or was it because the TV didn't accept the .mp4 format? After lengthy discussion with Blaise, Victor, and a few others, we decided that Victor and I would both have to get our laptops from home. I had the file, fortunately, on my laptop, and Victor had a program to convert .mp4 to other formats, if that was necessary. So we returned to the Zimulindas, and played the video file. That was when we noticed a synchronization problem, which got worse as the video progressed, until the video was a few seconds behind the audio. What to do? Victor proposed to convert the .mp4 file to .avi, and though it took a while, all went smoothly thereafter. (This was by 9:00 p.m., when most of the guests had gone home.)

OK, there was some anxiety the next day also. I had a mental checklist of everything we would need for the meeting: two signs that say "Chinese" in Chinese, one for the KH staircase, and the other for the back room door; scotch or masking tape; scissors; 20 copies of the song in pinyin/characters; table to put the TV screen on. This, in addition to making sure we had power and testing the TV screen once it arrived. Well, everything made it and was set up before the meeting start time. (whew!)

Interestingly, at 10:30 a.m. that morning—an hour before the meeting—I got a phone call from the younger sister of my Bible student, who apparently was still on vacation with his family and would not be returning until late that day. She asked me, in Chinese: Is there still a Chinese public talk happening today? I said yes, do you want to attend, and do you have a car? She said yes, but didn't know where the Kingdom Hall was. I promised to 接送你, which means "pick you up and drop you off." That was easier to say in Chinese than trying to explain where the Kingdom Hall was, even though it wasn't very far away. So I scarfed down what remained of breakfast, threw some clothes on, grabbed the two signs and two flash drives (just in case), and took a motorcycle out there. She drove us in her car to the Kingdom Hall, and we made it in time.

So, the bottom line is ... three Chinese people came to the talk! Total attendance was 16, including the language learners.