June 27, 2011

Elder and Sister Blattman’s Missionary Weekly Journal
June 27, 2011

Last week we went to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert here in Philadelphia. It was at a covered outdoor arena and Nancy and I had seats in the balcony “nose-bleed” section. One poor woman sitting behind us went into acrophobic hysterics. Her husband kept telling her with no success that she was okay and to quiet down. Some kind people took pity on her and helped her leave. To Nancy’s credit, she held her fear of heights in check.

The Choir has become quite diverse in the music they present. This isn’t your grandmother’s church choir anymore. The African number with many bongo drummers came as a surprise. Some of the leaders who went on and on about music with a primitive beat when Nancy and I were teenagers may have rolled over in their graves over that one. Our favorites were the Negro Spirituals with Alex Boye as soloist. Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nvslgRx2sE to see Alex Boye.

During the concert I sat next to a man who generously filled me in on much of the sports, popular music artists, and politicians in and about Philadelphia. This fellow and I come from different worlds so I learned a lot, or at least I pretended I knew what he was talking about.

Summer seminary started well with 5 boys. Four of them are African, Liberians I think, and the other African American. We have a hard time understanding them so we just smile and shake hands a lot. We took this week off because of Scout Camp and we are promised 5 additional students starting next week. We are contacting Via Sikahema, the sports caster to be one of our afternoon speakers. We’ll have to remember to take our camera and get some photos to show.