Chapter 5 An Amazing Team

I woke up the next morning to blue sky, the smell of fresh air and the sound of commotion as other campers were up and about before me. It was nice to just lay there for a while and listen to the sounds of the birds and life. I finally got up and showered. I looked down from my balcony location and saw Russell working on the battery to the grey pickup. It had been failing the day before. Russell had a spare battery which he was installing in the grey pickup as we had about a 4 hour drive through the hot, dusty outback of that area. We were headed to Russell’s farm which is in a more secure location than where we had been.

The reason we were heading to the farm was so that we could hold a 5 day workshop for the P’s to learn how to operate recording equipment as they are building a recording studio in one of their villages. Their recordings will join mine on the P airwaves. Fernando, Russell’s spectacular audio engineer, had selected all the equipment and we had purchased it prior to the conference. We were now bringing it in the back of the truck with us along those dusty roads.

As much as I totally wanted to attend the workshop classes, I knew that there were other things that I should be doing to make the best use of my time with the P’s. The Lord had prompted me to invite several P church leaders along to the workshop so that we could discuss church matters face to face. Russell contracted a “Chiva” bus to come to the P village along the Orinoco and transport them all to the farm. There was a group of P musicians and studio trainees and a group of church leaders all heading to the farm.

The grey truck lost it’s battery power again on the road. It was hot with no A/C or windows to open but we caught up to the bus and switched the battery again. We all made it to the farm and settled into phase two of the trip.

Fernando had three parts to his workshop: 1) music recording, 2) podcast recording and 3) field recording.

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Everyone, especially Fernando, was so impressed at how apt and studious the P’s were. They learned quickly. They diligently took notes and videos. One guy even drew sketches of the equipment to make his notes.

While Fernando was teaching the recording workshop, I gathered in a separate area to talk with the church leaders. We discussed several exciting and important topics. We talked about 1) how elders are appointed, 2) how the P’s can be taking more of the work load (like writing books, creating Sunday School curriculum, creating a P dictionary to establish official spelling), and 3) children’s ministries.

While I was speaking with the church leaders, Fernando took advantage of the opportunity to train them how to use a digital recorder in the field. In other words, they will be able to record a high quality digital recording at Bible conferences or at church and they will then be able to edit that recording and create radio material from it.

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To train them on how to create and record Podcasts, Fernando had them invite me as their guest on the show. There were about 8 of them who each had to create a short recording together with me. I thought that was fun and I was honored to be the guest on their shows. Each one had a question to ask me. I loved it! They had awesome questions.

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Venancio asked me, “Timoteo, there’s a question that my students ask me and I have not been able to answer it. Why did God allow sin to enter the world? He knew what was going to happen from the beginning, so why would a good God allow that?” I said, “You know, I have thought about that same question too. We certainly do know that God knew what He was doing and He knew that the Lamb was slain even before He made the world. Colors and shades are a combination of light and darkness. If it were all absolute light, all we could see would be white light I suppose, so the shadow areas actually help accentuate and define the beauty of the colors. I think it might kind of be like that. If we had never been sinners, I don’t know if we could appreciate God’s grace in the same way. God’s goodness and light is all the more meaningful in comparison to darkness. Paul says that all things work together for good.” All the the questions were awesome. I had wished we could have done that all day long, but I had to get back to my leaders meeting and they to the other stages of their workshop.

They recorded 5 songs during the workshop. It was so good to hear these good quality recordings. I am really looking forward to hearing more and more. Out of the 5 songs, Elendie’s was a highlight. Rick and I created a video version with the English translation of the lyrics.

The workshop and the conference were a tremendous success. It was such a team effort.

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Thank you all for praying and sponsoring. We all together are making great and eternal strides for the kingdom of God. My return flight back to Mexico was again cancelled and I had to endure another 22 hour day. Jorge, Sole and Robin awaited me at the other end in the Hermosillo airport. It was so good to be home again.