check out library

I had a little down time last Sunday and checked out the library. Here's the book I got. I heard of Robert Kreider when I worked for Mennonite Central Committee. What's that got to do with the organ? The first time I played an organ for a worship service was in Belgium, when I was sent there by MCC for language school. The organ was a little electronic. A big thanks to the librarian who graciously helped me check it out.

Chaldean hymn--can we?

chaldean alphabet - Google Image Search

The Mennonite Central Committee Iraq contact has sent me two Christian songs in Chaldean. Now, to figure it out for Americans. An Iraqi family visits us here at Zion and I shall ask them to help me.

I thought--wouldn't it be great to sing a hymn that Iraqis are singing!

This sample image from Google is just an example of the Chaldean letters. What MCC sent to me was a sound mp3 file (to learn by listening) and the words transcribed into English letters and a translation, so we know what we are singing.

An Iraqi hymn, please

Zion has been sponsoring a family from Iraq. Last week I asked them about Iraqi songs. They had fled the country as light as possible and had no music.

Today I called a large music distributor, Pepper. They had never had a request for that before. I called my friendly Hymn Society, headquartered in Boston. They had never thought of that before, but would look into it. Dr. Daw himself, composer of several well known anthems and director of the Hymn Society, responded with several google lines to get me to at least a little information.

There are Christian churches in Iraq.

I'm going to talk to the Iraqi family again and pursue the internet sites. I'm feeling feisty, somehow, about this. Wasn't it Mennonite Central Committee which had the slogan: if the Christians of the world would just agree to not kill each other....

brown hymnal?

Walk through these door ten years ago, you were in "GC" territory. That's General Conference on the denominational time line.

My first boss ever was Vern Preheim, a GC-er who rose to headship of the denomination by the time of the merger. He was my boss at Mennonite Central Committee for three years.

So I thought I knew something about GC. One important thing Vern never clued me in on. The 1969 hymnal is the brown hymnal. At my home church it is the red hymnal.

How about we merge brown and red and come up with rust. Who wants to sing out of the rusty hymnal? See that nice blue sign in photo? We all agree that the new hymnal is blue.