Our 100th Blog Entry!!

My Sidekick, Jennifer

The sweat was pouring out of me like a cartoon character! Have you seen the cartoons where it is pouring out in buckets because of being under pressure and how they exaggerate everything to illustrate a point? Well that was me tonight!!

About an hour before we are to go on the air tonight for our weekly radio show, I received a message from Pastor Moses that says he is stuck on the way from Kampala and could I take on the whole show with my own interpreter tonight. So I asked Jennifer if she was up to it tonight, as she has become one of my main interpreters here at the house. She wants to be a journalist so this is all a good experience for her. She is 15 years old, pretty amazing girl. It is good to have your regular interpreter here because the interpreter needs to understand my accent in order to follow.

So when it is time for us to go on the air I understood that we would have an engineer with us, but I was wrong. The engineer came in to turn on the intro music and makes the mikes hot and leaves! Yes he just leaves the studio and I am talking and this music is still playing because he had said to start but didn't show how to fade out the music. Oh good he comes back and realizes I need a little help here! He shuts off the music and leaves me again. OK I figure we can do this. I have this board with the slides switches like you see in the movies, a computer screen and phones but I don't know one switch from another. Yes it is exactly like that! Like a comedy show. Pastor Moses always operates the board and I sit across from him and just do my bit. But today Jennifer is sitting across from me and I am it!

Normally I have about 20 minutes of material because there is intro time in the front of the show and their is wrap up time at the end. But not tonight! When you are on the radio you can't have dead air you have to keep saying something. We kept it moving and luckily I had a few extra verses in my notes to refer to so I could stretch out the message. But there is no break, I can't signal over and fade to music for a minute and take a breather because I don't know how to use the board, so we are there with an open microphone beckoning us to keep talking. I look up at the clock to see how we are doing, and it won't move, the clock says I am only half way through the show and I am running out of material, but I have a whole bible in front of me, why can't I just start reading something, I could start at Genesis.

Then I am wondering are we really on the air? Oh yes I can hear myself on the headset but what am I saying? Oh Holy Spirit guide me I need the gift of tongue tonight! You know with a live audience at church they can see you if you are looking for a verse in the bible but when you are on the radio you have to go play by play. My hat is off to those great radio personalities that keep the show going. Boy the radio can really be exhilarating!

So the sweat is just pouring out and my head is soaked and I look up and we are going to make it, I see the clock and what I am reading in Psalms should end just about right on time. You know some of the Psalms are really long but not the ones I chose tonight! Anyway, I figure OK we are home free and we are right on time, but where is the engineer? So I think OK let's have a closing prayer and I am trying to pray long but it is coming up short, it is hard when you are on the spot. But I have nothing left in this prayer and I look over at Jennifer who is just doing so great and interpreting every word I say. So I looked at her and say well Jennifer do you know a song? At this point we just tell our audience that we are sitting here without an engineer and don't know how to sign off. If we weren't in the middle of it I could probably think of so many things that I could say.

Oh the engineer comes in and we hand it over to him as he somehow makes music come from somewhere and shuts off my mike. He said; "Oh I forgot to turn on the air conditioning, you are really sweating!"

And I was wondering what would be a significant enough event to have the honor as the 100th blog entry! Praise God! Thank you Jesus for an exciting journey!

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