What Mark Has Been Up To

I would follow Hillary’s last post with a detailed schedule of “A Day in the Life: Music Missionary”, but so far it would look something like this:

5:30- Get up, get ready, eat breakfast, have some devotion time, etc.

8:00ish through 5:00ish- ???

Really, my days here at the SIL center have all been quite different from one another, not exactly the rigid schedule of a school teacher.  For the most part I’ve been tagging along with Edgar, a missionary here who does music and scripture recording/editing, research, a little bit of teaching at schools, churches and workshops, and generally building relationships with the church and community.

Some of my time so far has been spent in a recording studio, where I’ve listened to and learned a bit about the music of Mozambique.  Edgar has also shown me the work he has done in editing a film based on the book of Genesis which has been translated into a local language.

But I’ve also been around the city of Nampula a lot.  So much that I’m almost used to the way people (mostly) drive on the left side of the road.  Edgar has taken me to help him observe a local church choir and dialogue about their music, to connect with other missionaries in the area, to meet some local musicians and artists and learn about Nampula’s culture firsthand; it seems to be a very people-oriented job.  Here’s a picture of a secular group playing some more traditional instruments for us:

Next week there is a possibility that Edgar and I will go on a bit of a trip to a different city for a few days.  We would be helping one of the translation teams record the Gospel of Mark in a local language.  I really hope that we can do this, as it would be exciting to experience God’s Word being made that much more available to those who don’t have it!  Your prayers would be greatly appreciated for this project, whether or not Edgar and I get to be the ones to help out with it.

~Mark