Thursday, May 15, 2008

House Meeting

Last night I went to a house meeting with local believers. There were about 17 of us, meeting further north of Tyssedal along the fjord. It was quite a multi-national meeting, with the Congo, Eritrea, Ghana (myself), Holland, and the US represented, not to mention Norway. Prayers were in Norwegian, English, Congolese (I don't know exactly which tribal language), and French. I brought my guitar and tried to figure out the songs without chord sheets, which worked for about half of them. When we got into the Gospel songs (black gospel, here) with the multiple key changes I was pretty much lost. I'll have to get Jan Olav (the other guitarist and worship leader) to teach me.
I also played the Norwegian song I wrote with my friend HÃ¥kon (did I mention I wrote a worship song in Norwegian?), and it was very well received. It's in NyNorsk and is mostly taken directly from verses in the Psalms, so I could do an almost literal translation to English, though it wouldn't flow in the same way. When I told Jan Olav that he said "Yeah, but you put it to music." I guess that's always a gift I've taken for granted - can't everyone put words to music? I guess all can, but it doesn't always make sense. Hopefully I can encourage more people to try at least.

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