Home-grown worship songs and stories

Our last meeting was the best we've had since beginning LRC last May.  Thank you Lord for prevailing over us and bringing peace and order into our gathering!  The Roma seem to have come to terms with the fact that the London Roma have pulled out from coming every fortnight to lead us.  This was a blow at the time.  The reason given was that our Roma men are not coming.  My sense was that the time had come to rise to the challenge to lead ourselves and make the whole thing home grown.

We now have a small number of songs of our own in Romani.  I have to put on my ethnomusicologists' hat and record, write up, and then sing the new songs.  We had Jeannot with us on guitar the first week, and then last week Trevor.  On retreat last week my director suggested I wrote a song.  See below.

To hold the attention during Bible Story time we did a powerpoint showing 12 slides of the story of Jairus's daughter.   This seemed to make a huge difference.

We've also begun singing the UNA club song which will head up the UNA FESTIVAL which we are planning for 2-4 August.   Gradually the kids are getting it.

But best of all is "The Wise Man built his house upon the rock."  I took my first attempt at the story line to one Roma home.  Once we'd got it into Luton-Romani, the girls (who had been educated in Belgium) sang the whole song in French. Word perfect.  Somewhat out of tune.  I suggested they had a go at writing a version in Romani and was amazed when 2 days later that had it all ready.  See below.  A 9 year old girl from another home now sings it from memory every time she sees me.  Intonation coming slowly.  This is so promising and a real breakthrough.  Communities are formed around communal singing.  But none of our Roma here seem to have ever really sung before.   We have far to go, but have turned a corner.

See our new songs in column opposite....