We praise the Lord that in the last 2 weeks we have received another shipment of Megavoice players. This brings the number of Megavoice players to 36 with more on the way. (Thank you to the Junior Class of the NTM Bible School in Waukesha, WI who raised the money for this particular group of Megavoice players that are arriving now.)
At the end of each session I distribute them to the people who have attended the lessons. The main purpose for the media players is to be a review tool for those who attended the lessons as well as a way for the old and sick who cannot attend to be able to hear. Another purpose of the players is to help those who missed the lessons for reasons of travel to catch up on the lessons they missed. The hardest category are those who can attend the lessons but refuse to attend and then come and ask for a player are turned away. One young neighbor showed up one day and said to me in an accusing voice “God’s word has not shown up at my house yet! I want a machine.” I responded by saying. “God’s word has been taught daily about 300 meters from your house for the past 9 weeks and you have yet to go to God’s word once. If you don’t want to go to God’s word why are you so upset that God’s word hasn’t come to you?” Usually we tell these people that they have to wait till the players are all distributed to those that attend the teaching and then, if there are any left over, we will let them have one. As more players arrive this allows more and more access. This is a tension we face as people want machines who refuse to attend the teaching. It would be one thing if people couldn’t attend the sessions because of religious pressure and needed alternative avenues of access but we have no indications that that is the case. It seems most people who don’t come because they feel they would rather be doing something else during that time.
As it is some of our more faithful attenders come from this group of people who refused to come for a long time but when they finally heard the lessons through the players they started to attend regularly. Pray that this will continue. This week we had 2 clan leaders come and ask for players even though they have never attended the lessons. One of them came and said: “Please forgive me. I have not been coming to the teaching. But I really do want to hear. Please let me take a machine (they call the players “machines”) so I can listen. I am like a child that has done wrong. The child might be disciplined by his father for his wrongdoing but he still sleeps that night in his father’s house. Even though I have not been coming please let me take a player so I can listen.”
The other clan leader is one of the most powerful traditional healers in the community. His two closest neighbors are also community leaders who regularly attend the teaching. One is the highest religious leader in our area and the other is an important clan leader. Both of these neighbors regularly have media players and he told me they sometimes bring their “machines” to his house to let him listen. By hearing bits and pieces he has become interested and wants to listen to the lessons from the beginning.
Pray that we will have wisdom in handling the tension between low attendance at the lessons and providing access to the lessons through the media players.