Much preparation went into Kusini’s memorial this year. Our meetings are normally finished by 7pm, but this year we were forced to take a later slot than usual, and the memorial had to begin at 7.30pm instead.
We predicted that this change would have an impact on our attendance, which it most certainly did. It had, on the other hand, some other effects too.
You see, I attended the English-language memorial which began at 6.15pm, and 65 people were present, perhaps a little over double the total of publishers. It was a nice programme, and an Ethiopian brother named Mesfin Haile gave the talk. Eveything went quite smoothly, in fact.
Until, that was, just after the closing song but before the prayer. The chairman was reading a rather long special announcement inviting any present to request a bible study, and the lights went out. It was pitch black. I really couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.
At the branch dedication in January a nice American brother made me a gift of a tiny torch which is very bright. It was on my keyring and I fumbled to find it, and walked up the aisle to give it to the poor brother so he could finish his announcement.
It was at this point that I realised that, in all probability, the power failure was going to last through our very much larger and more complex memorial celebration.
The time between the two programmes was only 20 minutes or so, and by the time the English programme had finished, many from our congregation were already waiting outside to come in. We hurriedly set up an emergency light on the platform for the speaker (The lamp was battery-powered, and we had no idea how long it would last.)
A few others had torches and so on and we continued with our programme as planned, by torchlight. Those passing the emblems were also carrying torches borrowed from those in attendance, and they used the light to follow the emblems as they were passed, to help prevent any spillages / accidents.
Avril sat at the back, facing away from the speaker, shining her little torch on Valerie Corey, another long-serving US pioneer, who was signing for a deaf Tanzanian lady who had turned up.
Really I perceived that evening that events were presided over by Holy Spirit, since not only did that unreliable but crucial emergency lamp continue to shine until everyone had left, but a drop of wine was neither spilled nor imbibed, and there were no accidents.
Perhaps most amusing of all was when one of the servers, Laban, got up to begin his duty, and promptly tripped over something in the aisle – a puppy. I had been wondering what the whimpering noise had been! It turned out that there were two tiny puppies in the hall that evening, and they had entered, not deterred by the presence of so many people, to see what all the fuss was about.
I nearly tripped on the remaining puppy, who showed up in the aisle just as the closing prayer finished. I scooped him up and held him in my left hand, shaking people’s hands as they left with my right.
Our attendance was 167, 250% of our publisher total, but still at least 30 short of what we might have expected had our memorial been earlier. Next year we’ll expect to be well over 200.
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