Evendays

Four of the elderly ladies from the local parish prayer group were gathering their affairs before leaving the prayer corner of the sanctuary. Daniel, the organist, was in a hurry to get to Geneva where he teaches music at the conservatory there. He’d just finished playing several pieces during their meditation time.

Mme Mosimann is a tiny, Swiss-German women, only 94 years old. She caught hold of Daniel’s hand as he was saying his necessary good-byes, throwing in the obligatory “Merry Christmas” and “My best wishes for the New Year”. Extremely polite. But Mme Mosimann would not let go of his hand, clasping it in both of hers.

“Merry Christmas,” she said, “And may you have much joy and peace in the New Year. May God grant you good health and may he protect you and give you much success in all you do.”

I suddenly realized that Mme Mosimann was doing more than being polite to Daniel. She was blessing him. What I had thought was just a cultural tradition to be pronounced to acquaintances are, in truth, words meant to transform. I had just glimpsed a holy moment, where one aged woman took her words, and her God, seriously, and brought blessing upon Daniel.

May God give you a merry Christmas, my friends.

10. www.viamichelin.fr: For those of us without GPS. It lets you blame someone else when the directions are wrong.
9. Abebooks.com: The best place in the world to find used books.
8. Kayak.com: Incredible site for chasing down cheap airfares.
7. Up to date news about the dollar and the SF Giants, both of whom will stay in the cellar all winter long, and possibly into the summer.
6. Skype.
5. Instant prayers and sympathy from internet friends.
4. Family blogs. A great way of keeping up with Son 2
(missionmarseille.blogspot.com/), Sister 1’s family (randywray.com), and Buster (littlebustersmith.blogspot.com).
3. Email pictures of nieces and nephews.
2. I can cc Wife when I invite someone over for a meal. No more surprises.
1. Unexpected, encouraging emails and inspiring blog posts that often make my day.

Trying to deal with “words”, using only 200 of them (or less) can leave “holes in a post”.

I took Deb’s comments to heart. I’m not sure a Spirit-filled, truthful message can be hurtful, for that implies ultimate intent. Spirit-filled messages may hurt, but their goal is to make aware and correct, to bring healing. Proverbs 12.18: Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.

Of course, as Randy reminded us, you can say the right thing but in the wrong way. I don’t have enough fingers or toes, or even hairs on my head to count the times I’ve stated the truth, but did it because I was irritated. That really makes people want to listen to me and be healed!

And I’ll bury this subject with a quick reference to Greg’s comment. Public speakers pay in spades for their “messages”. I’ve paid dearly on a human level for many a spoken word that was misunderstood. I have but myself to blame, or so my Freshman Communications Assistant to the Professor told us: “If people don’t understand you, it’s your fault.”

As James said: Let not many of you be teachers…

Now that’s hard to misunderstand.

There’s a consulting firm near Geneva that has several well-known international companies as clients. The firm must write up reports in English and send them to these companies. Often they are just personality profiles or simple interview summaries. A couple times a week, I receive reports and do a quick read-over, correcting a handful of mistakes, turning a phrase, making a few francs.

I discussed one of the reports by phone with a good-guy consultant. If you ever need someone to gently correct you, this is the man to do it. Intelligent. Huge heart. Sympathetic. Excellent language skills… Just sometimes he has difficulty getting his thoughts down on paper.

Back to the phone call… After 20 minutes working on some phrasing, I asked him: Does it really matter if we use the right word? And he answered back, without hesitation:

What we say makes a difference.

Some of my friends are struggling with that. Some are bloggers. Some are teachers. Others are parents, preachers (or preachers’ wives). But just remember… I’ve got a consultant friend who believes that…

What we say makes a difference.

… and a Spirit-filled message that says: Let all your words be uplifting, filled with truth.

I sent out my “mission” newsletter on Thursday. It’s an email that goes only to people who’ve requested it, which tells about stuff here with the church and how we are trying to reach out to the community.

115 people are on the email list. I ended up getting 8 responses right away, all of them bounce-backs from comcast.net. (Enmity with the Swiss server “bluewin.ch”, I guess.) Since then, I’ve received 5 personal responses.

One thing we foreign church workers can do is learn to communicate better with our sponsors, supporters and those far away who pray for us back. It’s one of the reasons for this blog: To keep in contact with people as they pray for the Lausanne work and our family.

But people are flooded with emails. (10 Africans have asked if they could give me 15% of a gazillion dollars, and that’s just this week!) I receive mission reports from Cambodia, Lyons, Mauritius Island, Marseilles, Geneva and Strasbourg. I read them all, and respond to them all (except for Geneva). I know, I don’t have a life.

Any suggestions? Should I not worry about it and keep on sending the email newsletter? Is there a way to make it more interactive?

I will respond to your comments…

I read a report yesterday that about 30% of the kids who are in Fresno elementary schools have English as their second language, and that there are over 70 languages represented in the school district. This reminds me of Lausanne where over half of the first graders in our neighborhood are not French mother tongue.

I speak American nearly down-right perfect. But I’m often caught "not understanding". For example, a few years ago while checking out at a grocery store the check-out cashier looked into my eyes and said: Paper or Plastic? Stunned, I thought a moment and answered: I’ll be paying cash. To which she replied: Paper or Plastic? I took out my wallet and laid the bills out on the plastic counter and said, "I’ll pay cash." She rolled her eyes and said really slowly: Do you want a PAPER bag or a PLASTIC bag? I sheepishly chose paper and walked out with my change (metal) and groceries.

This year, the question at the checkout was "Credit or Debit?" to which I intelligently replied, "What?". "CREDIT or DEBIT?", repeated the check out person. Now, this is bizarre, I thought. They’re asking me if I want them to debit my account or credit my account. Shoot, I’ll pick CREDIT any time.

Which is what I did.

So today, to all you USA residents, please talk slowly, enunciate, and don’t roll your eyes.