the scourge of cultural Christianity

I've been home for almost a month and almost all of me is back.  I want to write just one more piece about my experiences.

Very early on, I met the assistant pastor of the English language church.  He is a Korean missionary named Revered Kim and he came to Aizawl 20 years ago at the prompting of the Lord. He was planning to start a church.  He not only didn't speak any Mizo; he didn't speak any English.  He studied English at the college and says that after all these years, he know 'market' Mizo, in other words, not very much.  His youngest daughter was born there and is thoroughly 'Mizo'ized.

Kim found Mizoram so evangelized that no more churches were needed. Everyone goes to church on Sunday, and some on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Friday as well.  There is at least one church in every neighborhood and driving through town on Sunday is like driving through Jerusalem on Shabbat.  Everyone is walking to or from church.

Kim looked around to see what was needed.  He found drug addicts, alcoholics, single parent homes.  He said that almost every family is effected by at least one of those societal ills.  He began by going out into the streets and ministering to these lost ‘Christians’.

This was the first I heard of the problem.  Later I was sitting in town waiting for the ride back to campus and I looked up and saw a sign "Association of Positive People".  I asked Nutei what it was.  She said it meant HIV positive.  I asked if that was a problem and she said, yes, since people have started traveling more.  All I could say was, it takes more than traveling to spread HIV.

Later in my stay, it was India Day and school was cancelled (again).  The head of state made a speech which was later quoted by one of the faculty members at morning devotions.  Mizoram has the highest percentage rate of cancer, drug abuse, tobacco use, and HIV in all of India.  Everywhere I went I saw many people chewing betel nut.  This in an area with a 90%+ literacy rate.  You see, it takes more than education to prevent self-destructive behavior.

On one of my rides with Rami, I asked her if people were serious about their faith.  She said she thought they were.  I mentioned the disease rate, just even on campus, and the disconnect was obvious.  I talked to several people about this, but please remember about the non-judgmental nature of the Mizo people.

It looks like there is a cultural Christianity which pervades this area, similar to the US.  Yes, if you go to the market and give a large bill, you will always get the correct change.  You could probably drop your wallet in the middle of the street and within a few hours, someone would have found it, figured out exactly where you were and returned it to you.  However, cultural religion will not change your life or lead you to live your life differently than the rest of the world.  If your dog has puppies in the garage, they aren't cars.  One can feel the potential rebellion floating just below the surface of the city life of the young people.  They are enamored of Korean culture, also a very "Christian" country but at the top of the pop culture of the world.  Many people believe and many people pray, but without the teaching of holiness, eventually the ways of this world, which is dark and getting darker day by day, will swallow up the general goodness passed down for the past three generations.

I thank everyone who has followed these episodes and to all who wrote to encourage me.  If you think of me, please remember to pray for the people of Mizoram, who are so close, and yet ignorant of so much of the economy of God.

Blessings to all and happy Passover.
                                                                        -30-

is it Hebrew?

One of the clues to the reputed lost tribe identity I was searching for would have been language similarities, both in vocabulary and grammar.  The day after my arrival, the Principal selected two students and a driver to accompany me into town to buy any necessities.  We went to the main produce market, an underground sort of affair, and to one store, one street vendor, and one desk in the back of a snack shop to purchase a phone, sim card, and minutes, respectively.

In general, Mizos have only one very long name.  The syllables mean things like 'heaven' or 'lord' or 'desire' and they are strung together.  Many folks I met had a last name that started with Vanlal (meaning 'heaven' and 'Lord').....followed by several more syllables.  Everyone also has a nickname derived from their longer names, which makes it all the more confusing, because sometimes the nicknames are not exactly a part of the longer name.  Rather they are some of the syllables elided together.  So even though Lalnunzira is called Zira and Vanlalruata is called Ruata, Lallumzwala is called Lawma.  It took me a while to get the professors that I had regular contact with sorted out and, to my shame, I learned only the names of my students who had western first names.  The ones with single, long Mizo names, I knew by face, personality, and number.

The young lady who accompanied me on my first shopping trip was a first year student who was also in my Hebrew class.  Her name was Shalom.  Hebrew names are not unusual in Mizoram.  Everywhere you go you see stores named Jehovah Jireh this or Moriah that or Jerusalem the other thing.  What was unusual in Shalom's case was that her father related that God told him to name her Shalom and they only in the past few weeks found out what it means.  The Sunday school teacher had recently taught them this Hebrew word.

The young man who came on the initial expedition was named Hnema.  I really thought he said Nehemiah, but later in the car, Shalom spelled it for me.  Then she said it was a Mizo word and it has some meaning like 'comfort.'  Aha!  That is also the root idea of Nehemiah.

As time went on, I accumulated a few other cognates.  To make a sentence negative in Mizo, in some cases, you add a 'lo' to the end of the sentence, a bit like לא There is a question word which is 'maw', a bit like מה  The number 'one' is pa-khat like אחת , but that is where that story ends.

Mizo sentence order is object-verb-subject but Hebrew is more fluid, tending toward verb-subject-object.  Mizo speakers put their adjectives after nouns as is done in Hebrew, but they have almost no prepositions, which you can clearly hear when they speak English ("I look you").  On the other hand, they have a locational ending which is -a-, similar the the Hebrew locative ה .   

However, the word for 'love' is 'hmangaihna' which seems like a very long word for an very important concept, and the word for 'tea' is 'thingpui' which I was told means 'big tree'.  It sounds nothing like the word for tea in the rest of the world, and it doesn't even grow on a tree.

And Mizo is a tonal language, so 'in' can mean 'house', 'you', or 'drink', depending on the tone. This fact contributed to my not having learned more of it.

Does all that add up to anything?  I don't think so.  It would take a lot more in depth study to come to a rigorous academic conclusion.

In almost every language, you will find similarities to Hebrew.  Some people say that is because =all= languages descend from it.  If you are interested in learning more about that, you can go here: http://edenics.net/


What is  more compelling to me is the inclusion of pre-Babel Biblical concepts in Chinese writing.  You can read more about that here: http://www.icr.org/article/genesis-chinese-pictographs/
 

Women's conference

Although I am back from my trip, there are still some things I want to tell you about.

The weekend before I left, I attended the Mizoram Presbyterian women's conference.  This is what 10,000 people looks like:

The women in front are dancing, sort of.  The dancing in the Presbyterian churches here is more like walking around in a circle, always counter-clockwise, I was informed.  All the indigenous praise music is a steady 4/4 beat in major keys and most of the melodies would be perfectly at home in a US country-western bar.  Of course, the lyrics are praising God and Jesus.  This steady rhythm, marked by a drum that resembles our bass drum, lends itself to just walking around in time to the music.

The event was held in a temporary structure which is owned by the church and erected at the site which is chosen for that year.  The women are crammed onto low, backless benches.  This picture is taken from the stage, where I was privileged to sit.  My friend who took me is the head of the group of theologically trained women in Mizoram and as a person of consequence, she is entitled to sit on the stage in a plastic lawn chair with arms and a back.  I became a celebrity as the only white person there.  I was also in view of everyone, which became a problem as I walked through the crowd and people began pulling at my clothes in order to get me to stop and take pictures with them.

Unfortunately it rained most of the weekend.  We were just about up to our ankles in mud.  In some places, they had laid down boards to walk on.  In some places, there were a few scattered bricks.  I, having no illusions about style, wore my athletic shoes.  On the other hand, most of the attendees were all dressed up, including heels. 

I was told that some of the people were 'charismatic', but I was not expecting to see a few women turning somersaults in the mire, some passed out on the mud-covered astroturf, and some just moaning and wailing.  The Mizo people are very non-judgmental, but it also appears that they have very little discernment.  On the last day, one woman who was covered from head-to-toe in mud was throwing handfuls of mud at the participants and saying "God bless you."  When I casually asked if anyone was going to cast the demon out of her, I was told that no one can judge another person's spirituality.  Their recommended reaction is to just ignore her.  Some on the platform with me were snickering.

Although I could not understand the sermons, I got the gist of the direction of the main speaker.  He was really excellent, solidly capturing the attention of the people.  The theme of the conference was "Prepare to meet your God" from Amos 4:12. His first sermon was about returning to 'Poppa'.  He told a well-known story in English about a man who wanted to be reconciled to his son and put a an anonymous ad in the paper: meet me at the Hotel Montana, all is forgiven, Poppa.  Eight hundred boys showed up for that meeting.  The preacher's point was to be reconciled to God.  During his second sermon, he said in English 'simple gospel' and mentioned Abraham and Moses enough for me to know that he was expressing anti-nomian sentiments.  I didn't ask anyone for the translation; I got one from the folks I met in the evening.

Since the whole conference was in Mizo, I was mentally exhausted after the four sessions I attended, in addition to being chased as some commodity for picture taking.   I opted to stay back in our lodging on Sunday night.  The house is owned by Seventh Day Adventists, of whom there are very few in Mizoram.  These people own a bakery and the lady of the house came up to bring me some fresh bread.  She related to me that she had told her father of my presence, a white Jewish lady staying in the apartment upstairs.  She said he had never met a Jew in his life, so I asked her if she wanted me to come downstairs with her.  She was delighted.

Mr. Hrangsata (pronounced 'shrangsata') is 89 years old and his wife passed away just six months ago.  His family was in the Presbyterian church when he was growing up, until his brother went to work in Burma and brought back the 'Sabbath truth.'  The whole family began to follow SDA teachings, including Sabbath and Biblical dietary laws.  Hrangsata was 27 years old at the time.  They were the only family in their village to believe and came under persecution by the rest of the village.  He is still quite sharp and had lots of questions about Israel and the Palestinians.  Unfortunately, he does not speak any English, so the conversation was a bit strained.  He expressed his own frustration at this, saying that if only I spoke Mizo, he would have so many questions to ask me.  After his daughter translated the history of Israel and the so-called Palestinians from my English account, he came to the conclusion that the problem will not be solved.  Yes, I agreed, it is a 4,000 year old problem that only the return of Jesus will solve.

It was so wonderful for me to be able to speak with some like-minded believers after being exposed to some of the general deception at the conference.  The old man and his family had been watching it live on the television and we agreed that teaching in holiness is generally lacking. It was also an honor for me to be able to fulfill the dream of one old man, to meet a Jew.  

back stateside

Shalom.  I have arrived back to Georgia safely and am recuperating from a very long trip.  I post more here soon.
Thank you so much for your prayers.

passover

Thank you everyone for your prayers and follow-up questions about the Passover.  I have been completely out of pocket, prisoner of the women's conference in Serchhip (yes, there are 2 'h's). More about that another time.

The Passover was a tremendous success. The OT faculty went out of their way to find lamb.  They bought 3 animals and had them chopped into 400 pieces.  Rami cooked it all and it was delicious!  Many of the students and faculty had never eaten it before.  We had about 185 people in attendance and of the people that I spoke to, they were amazed at how clearly the Passover, what is called the Last Supper, communion, and the life of Yeshua were tied together.  They also videotaped the whole thing for future reference and kept the leftover matzah and my traditional haggadah for their museum.

Today I have some guests coming and then I need to pack.  I am on my way to the airport tomorrow morning about 11:00 am India time and then the very long flight back to the U.S.

I will continue to write a few more posts here after I get back to Georgia to cover some of the things that have happened the past few days.

I look forward to seeing/skyping/talking to everyone soon.  Thank you all for your prayers over this trip.  It would not have been possible without you.

spring has sprung

State tree of Mizoram called Herhse in Mizo, botanical name is mesua ferrea, also called iron wood or muscle wood

Pots of petunias

Weird cactus looking thing blooms even though it looks dead.  Couldn't find it on google.

Roses bloom all year around here.

Bottle brush trees or at least they look like what we call them in the US

Passover for 200

Shalom, friends.
Today I simply ask for your prayers for a Passover demonstration that I will do on Friday at 3:00 pm (Thursday 4:30 am east coast time).  All the students, faculty, and staff are invited.  If everyone shows up, it will be about 200 people.
I am so blessed that YH has opened the door for this to happen.  Almost since the day I arrived, the Old Testament faculty have been asking about it.  I actually packed one box of matzah which I will break into teeny, tiny pieces to use for the afikomen.
I was concerned about the horseradish because there is nothing like it here.  However, as I started to think about it, I realized that it is a very eastern European food. I began to research the history of maror and found a very detailed article online. http://halachicadventures.com/history-of-maror-and-horse-raddish/  Turns out, horseradish in no way fits the rabbinic parameters for the bitter herb.  They have something here which is called bitter gourd and looks like this:

Like everything else, they boil it and eat it cold.  I tasted some yesterday and it really is bitter.  We bought three kilograms today, along with 4 kilos of apples, which I am going to pressure cook and add cinnamon as a modified haroset.  The OT faculty are going to buy I don't know how many kilos of goat for their wives to roast in the small things which pass for ovens here.  It seems that lamb is too difficult to get.  The cook in the canteen is going to make us paratha, a flat, unleavened bread.
No big meal, just the essence of what Passover is, with a big emphasis on the new covenant and their understanding of communion.  Of course, as Mizo people love to sing, I will teach them 'dayenu' and 'hodu l'adonai ki tov'.  How can I resist singing 'hodu' in India?
Please pray that all would go smoothly and that blind eyes would be opened.
Thank you so much.

puan

Puan is the name for the traditional Mizo skirt.  It's just about 2 yards of woven fabric, worn wrapped around the waist with the end discreetly tucked in.  Several times I have been asked if I want to wear one and I decline.  What a disaster if I stand up and the skirt falls down!  Some of the women do wear belts around the waist to avert this possibility.

The other day was a national holiday, a secular day not celebrated by the College; nonetheless, many turned out in their finest.  The men have a traditional shirt which you can't see in this photo.  The plaid looks like this:

 The traditional colors for the women look like this:

 But you see every style and color in the stores:

 As far as I know, they are still hand woven.

Zira (husband) and Rami (wife) spent six years in Berkeley while Zira was getting his PhD.  They speak as good an English as is to be heard in these parts; their two young daughters are quite fluent.  Rami's parents live in the city but bought a plot of land in the country and the family is developing a farm so as to be more self-sufficient.  The two of them spend a lot of time out there, working the land and caring for the crops.

We went out to visit and Rami parked the car on the main road.  We had to walk down some very narrow paths on the edge of the hill.  One man coming up the hill gave me his bamboo walking stick, for which I was quite grateful.  Several times I had to hold Rami's hand taking steep downward steps.  I joked with her saying that I believe that the people are part mountain goat.

On the property, her parents have built one medium size hut, with a small kitchen and bedroom.  However, there is also a back room with three full-size puan looms.

The young lady who was working had a graph for the design, just as we would use for cross-stitch embroidery, or as I have seen used by Persian rug makers.  She told us it takes about one day to weave one skirt.

Down the hill was another building and I could hear more looms at work.  Rami's father, who introduced himself to me by saying, "I am 76 years old", was a high school teacher and speaks some English.  He told me there were 17 workers in the other building.  He started the business when he retired from teaching.

Rami asked me if I wanted to go back up the hill in the car with her parents' driver.  She told me he was an excellent driver, which they all seem to be, by necessity.  I told her that it is much easier for me to walk up than down, but she insisted.  So I got in the car and I found out the reason that she doesn't drive down to the property.  The road is still being built.  As we came around one curve, here was a big pile of rocks and the men hammering them into smaller pieces with which to pave the road.  Yes, breaking rocks in the hot sun is a reality here.

So the men began to throw the largest rocks to one side and eventually we drove past, two wheels on the dirt, and two wheels bouncing around on the pile of rocks.  I know we bottomed out 2 or 3 times.  I don't know what they make the cars out of here.  And when I finally got out at the market in Durtlang, I saw that the back tires were close to bald.

Yes, said Rami, I wanted you to have the experience.  And quite an experience it was.

Social works

"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear. --Lewis Carroll

Every Thursday all the students participate in social works, which consists of cleaning up the campus grounds.  Christmas decorations were still up when I arrived and so they have come down.  A fire break is to be dug to prevent the fires which come between winter and the rainy season.  If there is no break, the fires can run up the hillside onto the campus, into people’s gardens.  The students pick up trash (of which there is barely any; there are little garbage cans everywhere which say “keep ATC clean”) and sweep the streets with what passes for brooms here. They go into the wooded areas and clear away the brush.  I have seen them with wagons full of large, sawed pieces of log.  All the classrooms and faculty offices are swept and cleaned.

It's a very nice idea.  Not only do the students become responsible for their environment, they get some guaranteed time outdoors and time away from study.  They also have the opportunity to bond in different groups beside their class groups.  Students at the Bachelors level take all their classes with their grade level and are together in the same room all day long.

One of the main tasks is keeping the leaves off the streets.  For this task they use brooms like the one I use in my house, i.e., short.  Most of the people here are shorter than in the U.S., but there are a few fellows who are 6 feet tall.  Remember, the broom is 3 feet tall.  They clean the leaves out of graveled areas as well as the paved areas, but those brooms are just the stems of the grass, without the fluffy end.  And the leaves are endless, as the road is lined with many trees which are consistently shedding.  There are also other campus workers who remove leaves at other times during the week.

Being a good and moral citizen is emphasized as part of the degree program.  The other morning, as part of announcements, everyone was reminded to shut off the lights to their classrooms when leaving for lunch.  On Sunday evening, everyone was reminded to attend all the services in the chapel and on Monday morning, there was a surprise attendance call.  The masters students tend to be the most lax in attendance.  I don't know if there is any penalty for absence, aside from the shame of being outed as a bad citizen in front of the entire College. 

Lost tribes look for me

I have been assigned to teach informal English classes once a week. Almost all the students signed up initially, but only half of them showed up for the first classes at the beginning of the month.  Fewer and fewer have come each time, principally because they are simply overloaded by their coursework.  At first I was covering the most common mistakes in verb usage.  They tend to use 'use to' for the simple present, e.g., I am use to eat rice for breakfast every day.  I spent a lot of time on the differences between 'I used to' and 'I am used to' and have come to the renewed conclusion that English is just a horrible language.  We have also worked on pronunciation: they have several 'ch', 'ts', and 'sh' sounds, some of which I cannot hear the difference between, but they seem to have no pure 's' sound.  They can faithfully recite "She sells seashells by the seashore", but they fail to use their ability on a daily basis.
The students also have questions about life in the U.S. and life in the world outside India.  Sometimes I just talk to them and we come across idioms and vocabulary that they are not familiar with.  At those times, we discuss those things in particular.
The other day I was teaching and someone came to the door.  I didn't recognize the man, but I am not yet acquainted with all the students by sight and I assumed he wanted to attend the class.  I invited him into the room, but he stood in the doorway and began to explain his mission. He had heard from some friends that someone had come to ATC to teach 'ivrit'.  Yes, I replied, that is me.  He began to stumble over his words even more, mentioning the connection in Israel.  I explained to him that I was teaching class and if he would give me his phone number, I would call him later.  He seemed reticent so I told him he could wait if he liked and I would be done in 40 minutes.  He agreed to wait.
I returned my attention to the class and the students decided that I must be famous.  If you know me at all, then you know that I am quite famous but not quite so famous that a completely unknown person would show up at my classroom at the end of the earth looking for me.
After I was finished teaching, Adam and I had a very nice conversation.  He started to talk about lost tribes and I assumed he meant the Bnei Menashe.  No, he said, he did not join their group because he doesn't want to lose Yeshua.  He described himself as belonging to Messianic Judaism.  Yes, even here, people are returning to the roots of the faith and still believing in Yeshua.
Adam came back to my apartment and we talked for a good hour.  He said he has about six people who are interested in learning Hebrew but, again, transportation is a problem.  I told them they were welcome to come to my apartment which can easily seat a dozen, or if someone were willing to come and get me, or arrange for a taxi, I could meet them anywhere in the city.  When I gave him the learning Hebrew DVD's, he almost cried.  He said whenever he gets a gift, he becomes very emotional.  He told me that he had been in Messianic Judaism for about one and a half years.
He also told me that he was sure that others in the group would want to meet me and that he would call me to make arrangements, but in fact, I hadn't heard from him for a week.  Yesterday, I had a new dilemma in that the College wants to sponsor a Passover seder demonstration with some minimal participation, but there is nothing in the native culture here that resembles horseradish.  So I called Adam to see what they use here, but he was so busy apologizing for the fact that none of the people wanted to participate in the Hebrew classes, that I never got to ask him.  He told me that he was leaving shortly, that he had to be some place in a hurry, and that he would call me back, but I haven't heard from him.  I imagine that he is embarrassed about the situation.  I am sorry that I might not get to talk to some of the group, about 70 people who meet every other week, to encourage them, but I do not want to embarrass him anymore.  I will leave the ball in his court.  Please pray that Adam would not worry about the others and would come and speak with me again.

I look for lost tribes

If you haven't heard about the people from this region who lately have been claiming to be of the lost tribes, I recommend Simcha Jacobovici's Quest for the Lost Tribes by A&E.  It seems to be available on youtube here: https://youtu.be/PhB16xVTlbQ or you can get it on amazon.  While I don't agree with everything he presents, I believe the piece on Manipur is accurate.  There was an additional group making aliyah this week: http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/detailsnew.asp?id=feb1817/oth050
They also have a website http://www.bneimenashe.com/index.html which appears to be maintained by one Stephen Epstein (about whom I know nothing).
Through a contact in Israel, I was able to get in touch with someone from the local Bnei Menashe community.  She came to visit me in my apartment on Shabbat last week.  Although she has a car and driver (as some older people do here), she took a taxi because it was Shabbat.  I gather she wanted to give the driver the day off.
She told me many stories, about half of which I understood.  There are many dreams and visions associated with the process of moving the people to full-fledged Judaism from Christianity.  In the 50's, there was a tribal leader in Manipur, the next state over, who had a vision that the people were of the lost tribes.   Someone had a vision for the state of Mizoram, and a man who later took the name Gideon Ray began preaching Judaism here.  Although they were Christians, they gradually migrated toward Judaism and when Rabbi Avichayil found them in the 1980's or 90's, he affirmed their identity and many of them began to officially convert and make aliyah. 
My guest told me of one pastor who had a vision of a large stone coming toward Mizoram shouting "Maher maher shabbat leil".  She said the pastor knew no Hebrew.  I asked her if she knew what it meant and she suggested that I could tell her.  She said at that time, people began to question that pastor about whether the vision was talking about the Jewish sabbath, but in the end he denied it.  She said he was jealous for his Presbyterian salary and retirement. It is told that he died an agonizing death.
The lost tribes people always tend to tell the story of how they had leather scrolls, but the dog ate them.  It seems like the dog might have been some ancient Chinese emperor, but they take the reference to dogs in the New Testament to mean that gentiles either burned or otherwise destroyed their scrolls.
My guest's father was a Seventh Day Adventist pastor, but her parents were divorced and she grew up with her mother.  However, she was already acclimated to the sabbath at the time that she became convinced that Judaism was the way.  She has been practicing since 1980, having become persuaded in her mind from the preaching.
There are some 30 people in her group, but just like everywhere else in the world, the community is divided into two groups: Avichayil's group Amishav and Michael Freund's group Shavei Israel.  They are divided not only here in Mizoram but also in Israel.  Since Avichayil passed away, Freund's group is growing stronger and more people are joining.
My guest had a lot of 'interesting' ideas about the New Testament: that it was written about a thousand years ago to force people to adopt Roman customs.  I politely disagreed and told her it was a very Jewish book.  I told her she needed to have another look at it since it has undoubtedly been a long time since she read it.  She also does not understand why, if Jesus is the son of Abraham, the church does not worship on Sabbath.  Good question, indeed.  She says that if the church says that Yeshua is the son of the Holy Spirit, then it's fine for them to worship on Sunday, but if not, they should worship on Saturday.
We talked for a long time about many things, including what I am doing here.  She did agree that it was a good thing for the church to understand Old Testament faith and practice.  I would say that we had a moderate amount of communication difficulties, but we left the apartment arm in arm and immediately ran into some young people who already had taxis ordered that would carry her down the hill to the nearest town where should could catch a cab back to her house.

I have my say - Part 2

Sunday nights at chapel is a much bigger deal than morning devotions.  During the week, the students are permitted to lead the service, but Sunday evenings are reserved for faculty and persons of consequence in the broader community.  The service alternates weeks in Mizo and English.

On the Wednesday after I led the devotions, there was a(nother) short impromptu faculty meeting after the morning service and they asked me to lead the service that coming Sunday evening.  I was a bit shocked.  I asked if there was any special theme and they said, no, I could speak as I liked.  I determined to give my testimony and whatever else came along after that.  For one thing, there are no native Jews here, only ones converted by rabbis who agree that the Mizo are lost tribes.  Afterwards it occurred to me that these people have probably never heard the testimony of someone who became a believer later in life after having been out 'in the world'.  These people are all born into active Christian families.

On Sunday evenings they also have a chairperson who leads the service and the speaker only gives the sermon.  At first, the chairperson asked me if I could say the blessing over the tithe and offering, which I agreed to.  Then I asked him if I could do the benediction and he said that was customary for the speaker.  When the time for blessing the offerings came though, he called on someone else.

At the appropriate time I said my piece, again from the lectern.  I spoke a bit too quickly, for which I was chided afterwards.  Truth to tell, I had woken up with a seriously runny nose that morning and determined by late afternoon that a decongestant was in order.  It helped my nose, but it also made my mouth really dry.  And I do get excited when I am talking about all the things that I see YH doing in the earth.  In the end, I talked about this time of mutual investigation of 'Jewish' things in the Biblical studies seminar (which, after the first session, has been postponed a number of times) and how the beauty of what YH speaks of and prescribes for us in His word feeds our souls and spirits.

I was really looking forward to doing the benediction because it had been so well received on Monday morning, but, alas, when the time came, the chairperson called on the Principal to deliver it.  As we exited the chapel, he told me he did that for security reasons.  I began to imagine that if I had delivered the benediction, someone might have shot me, which is completely out of the range of possibility here.  He went on to say that it had to do with my visa.  Somehow it has come into someone's mind that I do not ascend to the upper pulpit because preaching is against my tourist visa, as if some stranger in the chapel that night might have ratted me out.  I know exactly where this is coming from: someone has manufactured the idea that they are covering my backside politically when they are really covering their own backside religiously, that I could not possibly have another reason for not ascending to the pulpit, i.e., not keeping their religious tradition, outside of putting my visa in jeopardy. I think that some people do not think it is okay for me to do what is comfortable for me to do, but instead think they might look bad if I do not follow the traditions of their church.  In general, the Mizo people appear to be very non-condemning and I think this is an unusual situation, but indeed I am an unusual person, especially here.

I have my say - Part 1

Back in January, I was scheduled to do the morning devotions which are held Monday through Friday at 8:30 a.m., beginning of the school day.  All the themes and scriptures are determined by the College chaplain in advance.  First they gave me one date, then another date, and I had my opportunity on Monday last week.  They gave me the last 3 verses of Genesis with the theme for the month of February being "faith".  The subtheme for the week was 'faith and works', but I just sort of ignored the works part.  I also had to choose the hymns for the day.  I have heard them sing On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand, so I chose that to open the service.  I asked them if they knew All the Way My Savior Leads Me, and a few of the students opened the hymn book and began to work their way through it following the solfeggio.  They said they didn't really know it (actually I don't know the original melody either, just the Rich Mullins melody), but they would learn it as they went.  The Mizo people are very gifted musically.  Everyone plays an instrument and they all love to sing.

The pulpit is about like this.  I don't really want to take a picture inside the chapel here.  They are very reverent about it.  When people first enter and sit down, they close their eyes and are very still for some minutes.  When a 'special number' is part of the service, applause is forbidden.  The chapel here at the College is less ornate than the one in this photo, but this is the general relative height of the pulpit.

 I admit that I was quite nervous.  For one thing, they have a platform where the faculty sit on either side, a large desk in the middle for the 'chairperson' of the service, a lectern on the right and left of the desk for readers (segregated male and female).  And then there is this very high pulpit another half a flight of stairs above the platform that the preachers generally step up to.  I told them from the beginning that I would not be going up there, because it was not 'my tradition'.  This is a phrase they understand, even though they were in disagreement with me.  However, it is the general attitude here that people should be comfortable with what they are doing.  So I preached from the 'female' lectern.  The true reason I don't want to go up there is because I just don't think Yeshua would have walked up there.

I think I wrote my whole sermon the day it was assigned to me, but over the weeks until the day, I added to and refined it.  I wrote it out entirely and practiced it to myself, because the speaker is limited to 10 minutes.  I talked about how the lives of Joseph and Yeshua are parallel, how Joseph's Hebrew and Egyptian names figure into that, how the word for 'embalm' is related in Hebrew to the word for 'wheat', how Joseph had the faith to know that his descendants would leave Egypt some 200 years after his death.  I continually came back to the idea of resurrection and quoted the scriptures that assure us as believers.  I honestly don't know if anyone followed much of what I said.  They do not usually quote many scriptures from all over the Bible, but you know that I did.

I asked my Hebrew students the next day what they had understood, and they mumbled a few words about Joseph and faith.  It should also be noted that not many of the faculty were in attendance because there had a been a conference over the weekend and they hadn't returned yet.

I had also asked the chaplain if it would be okay if I said the benediction and could I say the Aaronic benediction.  Yes, he said, they are interested in all kinds of new things.

And that was how Monday went last week.  I managed to do everything in order, say my speech, although probably a bit too quickly.  Everyone really liked the benediction.

Banana miracles

Many of you have already heard the story of the bananas that occurred while I was here for my survey week in November.  The administration was very concerned about how I would get rice for breakfast and I told them I don't eat breakfast.  I guess they were fairly well horrified.  I told them I would have a banana for breakfast.  This apparently is unheard of.  My entire stay was for 6 days and they brought me 30, yes, I counted 30, bananas.  The miracle was that they only generated one fruit fly.

Seriously, there is something quite different about the produce here.  It seems to last for a much longer time than in the US.  As far as I can tell, the produce is fairly organic.  Almost everyone here on campus has a garden and they don't use any chemicals.  The bananas just grow naturally.  People harvest them and bring them to market.  You can see papaya trees around campus as well.

And you can buy two weeks worth of bananas and by the end of two weeks, the last one might have a small brown spot on it.  The bananas are smaller, maybe 4", and very sweet.  I have bought one cabbage and had it in the fridge for 2 weeks and it still appeared and tasted quite fresh.

I think the big food corporations have sold the American public a line.  I suppose if our produce were raised to ripen naturally and not shipped cross country, we also might have longer lasting fruits and vegetables.

you can't get in hot water here

There is a hot water heater in every bathroom and it has a tap about knee height on the bathroom wall. There's another tap on the other side of the bathroom for the cold water.  Some bathrooms have shower heads installed, but some don't. As in some other countries, the whole bathroom is the shower and there's a drain in the corner of the room.  When you turn the shower on, everything in the bathroom gets wet.  Toilet paper alert!

Here people take 'bucket baths' (my name, not theirs).  You fill up a bucket from the hot water and cold water taps, get wet with the ubiquitous handled cups hanging on the side of every bucket, soap up, rinse yourself off.  It took some real grit to bathe when I first got here.  The challenge of standing in an unheated, tiled space pouring water over myself was a bit daunting.  Baths are finished in a hurry.

Finally the day came that I thought it was warm enough that I could actually stand naked for a bit and take a real shower.  I turned on the tap for the shower and waited for the water to warm up.  Alas, the hot water heater is not connected to any other tap in the apartment, not the shower, not the kitchen sink, nothing.

In English class, we talked about taking =a= shower or =a= bath and I asked the students if they ever took showers.  Yes, they said, during the summer when it's really hot.  At that time, the water which is in a giant cistern on the roof is also somewhat warm.  However, summer here is like one big shower.  It rains constantly during the monsoon season.

subject to change without notice

From the beginning I was surprised at how unaware the faculty were of the daily class schedule.  I'm not talking about that of other professors; I'm talking about their own.  The man whose place I took in teaching beginning Hebrew kept asking when I was teaching class.  Originally it was his class and he taught it for half a semester.

Faculty meetings are held when needed, but in general I am excused from the big ones because they are held in Mizo.  However, there are lots of short, spontaneous meetings after chapel and someone always motions me to come and sit up front where the rest of the male faculty sit during morning devotions. (The female faculty sit on the other side of the podium, but I sit in the back of the chapel.  They have finally quit asking me to sit up front.  Anyway, I'm not the only faculty member that sits in the back.) 

However, what is more troubling is the number of classes that are canceled because other events are happening.  There have already been several holidays since my arrival on January 11.  In addition, there have been several days of testing for prospective students.  These tests require use of all the classrooms and so classes are canceled.  The professors also speak regularly at conferences held off campus on the weekends, and they often don't arrive back before classes on Monday.  Again, classes are canceled.

Even more disturbing is the number of deaths and illnesses in the extended community.  Of about 25 faculty, 3 or 4 have lost family members in this past month, several have had friends or family members who went in for surgery, and several former professors have either passed away or been sick in the hospital.  For those events, the faculty is asked to rearrange their schedules in order to  attend the funeral or visit in the hospital.

It seems to me that there is a lot of illness here.  Recently the College ran a blood drive and I was told that half of the students were not allowed to give blood because of high blood pressure.  Though for many of these students this is their 2nd or 3rd degree, they are still young, in their 20's and 30's.  Some people blame it on diet, but when an affliction like this is so widespread, I imagine there is a spiritual root.  I've talked to a few people, but that idea does not resonate here.

The overall result is that sometimes the schedule is a bit erratic.  Of course, this is frustrating to me because my students need every minute of class time that they are scheduled for.  A few times I've met with them outside just for additional practice.

This irregularity reminds me of the ants in my bathroom.  I have no idea where they come from, but every two or three days there are several of them just wandering around aimlessly.

Maybe it is all something in the air here.

a matter of definition

On the way from the airport when I first arrived, Sam told me that he and his wife and the driver and the driver’s wife had spent all day cleaning the apartment and that they rolled out all new carpet.  When I got here, there was not a carpet in sight, but all new roll linoleum rolled out on the floor.  It is full of air pockets, lumps and bumps, barely cut to size, with long pieces folded up along the walls in some places.  Well, they are a theological student and a handy man at the College.  They are not professional floor installers.  It’s going to have that characteristic new linoleum smell as long as I am here.

In fact, all the floors in every room in every building are covered with this rolled linoleum and none of it is glued down.  It is all rolled up a few inches at the wall and wherever there are places that the rolls don’t exactly meet, small pieces are cut and put under the larger pieces.

However, almost everywhere else, the linoleum lies quite flat.  The bumps make sweeping in my apartment kind of interesting.  Not to mention the tools that I have to use.

My broom and dustpan.  The broom (100% natural fibers) is about 3' tall and the dustpan about 16".  It makes sweeping back breaking work.  And all the action is in one wrist.

So when the principal came around to make sure everything was okay, including if the dryer was “installed”, I just said yes, even though it is sitting in the spare bedroom with the ventilation hose sitting in the spare bathroom, just perched inside the door.  "Installed" here is a matter of definition. At first I was thinking about running the dryer at night and sleeping in that room, just for the warmth, but now it seems that spring has sprung and the nights are warmer.  I have discarded one of my three blankets.

The wedding

The son of the Australian woman who arranged for me to come here married the young lady who has been her translator for the past seven years.  I don't think they actually met one another until the last couple of years.  Her son came as her escort on one or two trips here and that is how the couple met.  If their happiness during all the ceremony is any indication, they are truly in love.

I'm really sorry that I don't have many pictures.  The ceremony was held at a resort at the bottom of some mountain trail and the sun was quite bright during the afternoon, which made it impossible to see what the camera was focusing on.  Also I was sitting at an odd angle and didn't have a good view of the bride and groom, but I was happy for a seat at all, as 600 people attended the wedding, and I was even slightly in the shade.

First there was a longish western style ceremony.  A female pastor came from Australia, but several other local pastors spoke first.  The groom's sisters each read from Scripture, then the vows were said and rings exchanged.  The Australian pastor preached from the Song of Songs and then the couple took communion.  Everything was translated into Mizo which effectively doubled the length of the ceremony.

The bride and groom left to change into traditional dress for a Mizo wedding and there was an entertainment provided by a local dance team.  I asked my escort, Dr. Lawma, head of the Old Testament studies department, whether he had ever seen a Mizo wedding, and he said no.  In fact, no one else here that I have asked has seen one either.  The Mizos were evangelized 100 years ago and not much remains of the local culture outside of some dances and their language.


First the dancers did the bamboo dance which looks like this:  https://youtu.be/RhJTKPPq1G4  The dancers were too far to get a picture but here is the sole musician who accompanied the dancers at the wedding.

She is wearing three gongs around her waist by which the dancers kept the rhythm.  I have seen a similar dance done by dancers from the Philippines.

Then the dancers did a couple dance like this. https://youtu.be/1KxsLNATqeY  It is imitating a rooster and a hen.  I was close enough to get some pictures of this, but every time I hit the button, the dancers turned and all I got was their back sides.   The dancers I saw stayed a lot closer together, but you can see how they are in a total squat position the entire time.

Finally the bride and groom returned in full Mizo dress. My understanding was that the bride is from a group calling themselves Beit Israel.  I admit to expecting some vaguely Hebraic custom or ritual but, alas, nothing.  Here is the man who conducted the supposedly Mizo ceremony.

His speech was not translated into English so I had to rely on my escort.  Apparently, the minister made some speeches against the Christianization/westernization of the native peoples.  That hula hoop looking thing he is holding is made of some natural fiber; Dr. Lawma called it a rope, but it was rigid.  He had the bride and groom step into it and hold it about waist level while he spoke.  It is supposed to join them together and instead of  wedding rings.  Then they were to drink out of one cup with two straws, cheek to cheek.  Afterwards, he gave the bride a wrap to put around her new husband, but then they both wrapped up in it. Finally, they sang a special song, which turned out to be the Mizo national anthem.  Not exactly what I would have picked for a wedding.

The mothers of the bride and groom made speeches and then the food was to have been served, but it was stuck in a traffic jam.  We had already been there for about four hours and decided it was a good time to make a get-away.  As we were walking back up the hill to the car, the truck with the food was descending.  But, as I have said previously, Mizo food is not really worth waiting for.

My third lesson

It was finally arranged for me to give a weekly seminar to the Biblical studies faculty and Masters students.  We had the first meeting on Thursday afternoon.  There were about 10 students and 5 faculty.  I was surprised because one of the former Principals of the College (they don't call them Deans) had passed away that morning and there was much discussion about who was going to attend the home visitation at 12:30 or the funeral at 2:00.  So I wasn't really expecting any of the faculty to be at a 1:00 pm seminar, but they were all in attendance.  There were the requisite number of post-lunch coma heavy eyelids and the students refused to interact during the meeting, which I found a bit frustrating.

I think the seminar is billed as covering a Jewish view of Scripture, but of course I am teaching a Hebrew roots view of Scripture.  I am covering what is strictly in the Bible, Old and New, contrasted with what is practiced by traditional rabbinical Jews. I leave them to figure out for themselves what they are practicing.

I started with the firm belief that Torah, the five books of Moses, is the foundation and everything else must line up with those teachings, that Torah means 'teaching and instruction', that we do not worship as the nations, that if we have questions we are free to discuss, bring scriptures, and agree to disagree.  That the commandments are not the goal of the religion but a means for experiencing God, that circumcision of the heart is from the beginning, that relationship precedes commandments.  That the word of God is in harmony with all creation and that science will prove the word of God, that we seek patterns in scripture, that history is prophecy.

From there, I explained that the 'paths of righteousness' in Psalm 23 are really 'cycles of righteousness' and that this specifically refers to the feasts of Leviticus 23, starting with Shabbat.

I explained how Shabbat is typically celebrated in Jewish homes and the difference between the Biblical requirements and the rabbinical requirements, and the various places where Shabbat appears in the New Testament, about Yeshua and Paul having a custom of being in the synagogue on shabbat, about Yeshua healing on shabbat, about Paul preaching until Eutychus fell out of the window.  I also talked about Shabbat as a prophecy of the 7th millennium.

I talked for about an hour without stopping.  At one point I asked if I was talking too fast, but the faculty member who had finished his PhD in California a few years ago assured me that it was fine.  I guess I was breathing during all of it because I am still here.

Finally, I got to the end of my notes, and the professors asked a few questions.  They wanted to know how the Jews view keeping Torah in relation to getting into heaven.  It's just such a different mindset.  One said he was glad that I was able to show that Yeshua never broke Torah, that he only conflicted with the traditions of the religious leaders.

Then one of the students asked my opinion about the sabbath, since I had been converted to Christianity.  So we had a little talk about that. (I think I will take up the subject of conversion first thing in my next session even though I really want to cover Passover and Unleavened Bread.) But what he really wanted to know, and it was his own thought, was that it seemed like Christians should still be keeping Saturday sabbath and what did I personally do?  I said that I do keep sabbath on Saturday but he would have to talk to his professors about general practice.  And in fact, one of them immediately jumped in and steered the conversation in another direction.

Bingo!  You know it just doesn't take too much deep thought to figure these things out.  You are grafted in to the commonwealth of Israel.  What is a commonwealth?  A form of government.  A government has laws.  The Torah, the five books of Moses, is the body of that law.

Hebrew lessons

This is about half of my Hebrew class.  Sweet kids and earnest but without a chance of covering the material that was left to me.  First of all, the book is from 1927, full of words like 'thee' and 'hearken'.  Full of descriptions like this:

A word is said to be in pause when its accent is a major stop, i.e.  Silluq or 'Athnah (pp. 20-1): in either case the word being at the end of a clause.  The tendency, in speech, is to prolong the accented syllable of the last word in a sentence, i.e. when the word is in pause: thus, the word for 'water' is מים [with various vowels which I cannot reproduce here] in the middle of the sentence, but in pause it is: מים [with some different vowels] with 'Athnah or Silluq, i.e. the short vowel Pathah in the accented syllable is lengthened to Qames. 

This for students whose second language is English.  I don't even understand this stuff.

So the prof who started teaching the class covered the aleph-bet and rules similar to this one for the first 8 or 9 weeks, without them actually learning a single vocabulary word.  That was 27 pages of the dreadful textbook.  He left me 8 weeks to cover 70 pages including these topics: the definite article, inseparable prepositions, nouns and adjectives, gender and number, dual form, conjunction, interrogative pronouns, construct (I have to stop myself every time and =not= say smikhut), personal pronouns, possessive pronoun suffixes, the direct object marker (this is how far we've gotten as of today), past tense conjugation of regular verbs, active participle conjugations, imperfect conjugation, the imperative, infinitives, the heh interrogative, passive participles, cohortative and jussive and the reversing vav, in addition to all the vocabulary.  They don't cover the binyanim in this semester, which I guess is a blessing.

Last week, I found out that they are taking advanced Greek in the same semester, in addition to 6 other courses.  Of course, there is no option of changing anything because the curriculum is entirely dictated from the Presbyterian Senate (or Synod--many times I can't tell the difference between these two), as are the textbooks and final exam.

On the other hand, when I met with some of them yesterday for extra practice (classes were canceled because they were using all the classrooms for the entrance exam for next year's students--things like this happen often), they told me they really like the concept of the relationship between 'word' and 'thing' as expressed by the one Hebrew word דבר.  I told them I wish we could drop the whole rest of the class to talk about things like that.

At least a few have had their interest piqued.  I just pray that they will study enough and absorb enough to pass the final exam.

Diet

Mizo folks are just not very interesting cooks.  Everything is very plain, although extremely fresh.    Many people have gardens behind their apartments, terraced onto the side of the hill. I guess they eat a lot of pork, but I have told everyone that I don’t eat it, so they serve me chicken.  The chickens here are huge; the ones I saw in the market must be 10 pounds, the size of a small turkey.  However, they don’t tend to buy whole chickens, just some pounds.  They chop it all up into pieces about 1” in size, cook it, sometimes with spices, and serve it bones and all.  Very messy for eating.  They have cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, daikon radish, peas, kale and similar green leaves, potatoes.  Vegetables are mostly steamed and served cold.  Mizo salad is very finely sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions, no dressing.  Dal (very thin lentil soup) is requisite at every meal.  Some people make it with some spices, but some just boil it.  And rice and rice and rice.

Every meal is required to have at least 4 or 5 dishes, which is quite Asian and common in other countries.

Some friends took me to the nicest restaurant in town for my birthday.  The menu is strictly Indian food, which was fine, but really, I've had better Indian food in Athens.

The apartment was not really ready when I moved in, with no means for cooking at all.  The second day, a rice cooker and a microwave arrived.  I have been making do with this and eating at other people’s homes.  They offered me a countertop gas stove, but it would take the whole countertop in the kitchen, so I turned it down.  If the electricity continues to go out every day, though, I might have to see if I can still get one.

So, yeah, I’m on a diet. 

Life is cooperative

There is an open door policy here and you always know if anyone is home.  On the outside facing door of every room in the house, there is a hasp, with a latch on which to hang a lock.  

The door to my apartment

On the inside facing door, there is simply a bolt.  

outside the door to my bedroom

inside the door to my apartment

So if you're passing by anyone's house, you can see if it is locked up or not and you automatically know if anyone is home.

Everyone is always welcome at everyone else’s house all the time.  I've been invited to dinner by several people and they always say, "just stop by anytime".  The thought of showing up at someone's house at 5:30 pm and expecting to eat dinner with the family is a bit alien to me.  I might do it with my family, but I live so far away from my family that the event is unlikely.  However, this is a small, tight-knit community and the behavior stems partly, I expect, from their tribal background and partly because it is so isolated geographically. The open door policy has become the ethos of the people.

You really can’t go anywhere without a vehicle.  The nearest small town in actually less than a mile, and I feel like I could walk (mostly) down to it, but I doubt that I could walk all the way up.

There is a bus that runs several times a day, down and back up to the Presbyterian synod office in Aizawl.  I could get on it by myself, but I would never know where to get off or where to wait to get back on for the return trip.  Every part of Aizawl looks the same as every other part of Aizawl to me, winding streets, hairpin turns, crowded shops.  And shopping will be impossible unless I learn how to count to 100 or so.  However, folks are very honest, they say, and if you give money, you will get the correct change.  No one will cheat you.

If I need something, someone will bring it.  Sometimes they bring things I haven't asked for and don't need.  People have been so kind to offer to take me to the market, or buy food for me, or share whatever they have with me.  It's something we really lack in the US.

scary technology

These are the boxes outside my door, one live, one dead, one meter.

These are the wires coming out from the top of these boxes.

 Please notice that some run directly into the house through the window.  The window will never be closed, more's the pity.  The winds really kicked up last night and there was a cold breeze blowing through all night long.  Actually, none of the doors or windows shut tightly anyway.

These are the wires that run to the left from the above picture.

 This is a box attached to the neighbor's house.

This is attached to a post at the street level near the steps to my apartment.

This, as you can see, is attached to a tree.  I have no idea what it is, but there is a little light on the other side of it which is lit.

But, look, I have internet today in my apartment.  Hooray!
My being here has brought to the attention of those who have lived abroad just how far behind things are at the College.  Some people are quite disturbed and think that I am suffering horribly in the deprivation, but I have assured them that I am all right.  Still, they are trying to make some upgrades on behalf of the next person who arrives to stay and have arranged for me to get a land-line telephone.  I will let you know the number if you like, so you can call anytime......