Meeting for Field Service
The brother conducting the meeting, while waiting for 9:00am to strike, sat there in his chair with a slight smirk on his face, holding up his 2011 Examining the Scriptures book, open, as if he was going to consider it.
Those attending the meeting, probably about just 6 or 7, were sort of chuckling, and smiling. Turns out he was just "messing around", making a reference to the item in the February 2011 KM instructing us to no longer use the "daily text" in the meetings for FS.
In the Territory
Two of the brothers encountered a home that seemed inaccessible, with fencing and a locked gate with a chain and padlock. Then they spied someone walking from the back of the house to behind their detached garage. Walking up as close as they could, they called out and made contact with the two homeowners, a woman who spoke with a heavy accent (probably Japanese) and her husband or boyfriend, who seemed like a total Californian native.
She was opposed to us being there, identifying herself as a "Christian", and upset about something her father-in-law had told her.
"If I'm dying, he cannot give me his blood. He says I just have to die," she said.
The brothers asked "Why would he say something like that?"
They didn't know.
So the Bible was opened to Acts 15:20 ("abstain from... blood") as a likely reason for his statement, and then they said,
"But the good news is that many hospitals don't even use blood anymore, like Sharp Hospital in Chula Vista. In fact, do you know Kobey's Swap Meet? Well, Mister Kobey the founder received a blood transfusion, and he got HIV and died."
The woman's tune immediately changed and she said "I don't want to get a disease!"
Then she actually asked about learning more, with discussions from someone who could come by her house, during the day on either a Wednesday or a Thursday.
Turns out an elderly brother used to call on her, bring her "books", and then he died, and she misses him.
One of the brothers is coming back Thursday during the day with his wife to start a Bible study.
Speaking of tunes...
During Return Visits
Toward the end of the morning there were 6 left in the group, snuggled into a Honda Odyssey, making calls. One of the sisters in the van who evidently really knows a lot about music made some comments about the new song book which I found really, really fascinating.
First, she said that the recorded music for our new song book is obviously a computer playing. The notes are too perfect. When a human plays, it doesn't sound that way.
This I thought was cool, because long, long ago in a place far, far away, I found a 1970's vinyl LP record album called "unplayed by human hands".
It contained the music of a computer playing a pipe organ.
At the time I was pretty excited, because I was really intrigued by movies where computers eventually take over the world, and so I loaned the album to a respected musician (I'll call him "Ray" since that's what most people called him).
"Ray" was not impressed. (hmmm... since "Ray" is his real name I think I should get rid of the quotes). Anyway, yeah, Ray was not impressed. He explained to me why:
"It's too perfect. When a master plays, there are subtle variations in distance between the notes, you know, when he hits the keys. He adds his own flavor to the piece."
Okay, so that burst my bubble about computers taking over the world. Until the Terminator movies, that is.
Hey, what's that way over there in the distance? Oh yeah... it's my original point. Let me get back to it now.
So anyway I had no idea that we were listening to computer-generated piano music at the Kingdom Hall all this time! If she's correct, that is, and I don't have any valid reason to doubt it, especially with what she next mentioned, which is the 2nd interesting thing she said.
"There were four different people who played the music for the old songbook."
(There was then some discussion in the car about which songbook, and yes, she means the brown songbook we just ceased using, not the old pink songbook from the 70's.)
She continued,
"Yes, a friend and I narrowed it down one time, to four different humans, four different playing styles. That's what we came up with, anyway."
I like strange Saturdays.
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