I had commented earlier on the load-shedding experience and how it is that South Africans take it in stride and have a bit of a sense of humor about it. Yesterday, though, was a new experience for me, and that is the load-shedding experience while one is at church (and while one is eating dinner, for that matter). I first noticed something was amiss when I went to breakfast and in the elevator on the way down saw that two load-shedding periods for the day were posted, the first from 10AM to 12:30PM and the second from 6 to 8:30PM. At first, while I ate, I kept the matter in mind.

Before too long, though, it was time to discuss the logistics of services with the festival coordinator, since I was the songleader and we had the blessing of the little children scheduled for services as well. At first it was proposed that we were going to do the blessing of the little children after the sermonette and before the special music, which was appropriately the adorable children’s choir. However, when we discussed the limited power that we had available in the hall, even with a few battery packs that local members had brought with them, in consultation with the sound crew, which was unwilling to blow another amp as had been done during a previous load-shedding experience during local services in Cape Town, we decided to re-arrange the services so as to get the sermonette and sermon done earlier in order to make sure that we had the battery power to operate the sound equipment, and microphones and to play the recorded message from Mr. Shabi (the president of our church), and then to push the special music and the blessing of the little children to the end, before the announcements.

And so this was done. When load shedding commenced, we were in darkness for a bit and then the lights came partly on in the church hall. We had enough sound to power the microphones but not the projectors, so we were unable to see the hymn lyrics there or see the recorded video for the sermon. I informed the audience of the changed format due to the load-shedding and we made the best of it. A member from Cape Town who I have talked to previously gave the sermonette, and then we had the recorded sermon and it went very well. I will have more to say about that message and how it fit along with the theme of the Feast in a later entry, of course. After the closing prayer I announced the three parts of services that were remaining, and then we had the little children come up and sing. During their second song, the recorded music stopped during the intro, but the children were undeterred and kept on singing anyway, which was pleasing to us all. During the beginning of the blessing of the little children, the elder from Durban (he of the excellent impala lasagna and a family farm in the region) had light for a little while during which he was reading scriptures about the favorable biblical attitude towards children, but soon we were plunged into darkness briefly again, and then fortunately we had some light for the close of the ceremony when the three children we had were blessed, and then announcements were given. Interestingly enough, while the load-shedding was supposed to have ended at 12:30PM, our room continued to be without power for another hour or so after that while my stepfather napped.

We had a second helping of load-shedding in the evening when we went to dinner. I had read in the elevator that load-shedding affected what was available to eat in the hotel restaurant, but I was informed by one of the staff that this was not so. Whatever was the case, though, it did seem to affect the work ethic of the staff, as getting our order in and then getting our food and after that getting our bill required long amounts of waiting where our waitress was nowhere to be found. When we finally got our check and paid for it in the loud restaurant–made even louder by the fact that I had a large crowd of people directly behind me at the bar–the waitress apologized for the chaos in the kitchen. I do not know exactly what that entailed but the experience did seem to be a bit chaotic for my tastes, and I was glad to be able to return to the peace and quiet of the room, where it was peaceful and quiet–we were all tired–until I woke up to the sound of my mother attempting to loosen the top of a bottle of water with a loud racket that woke me up, but that is another story, I suppose.