Hold the Applause Please

Today Julia and I had the opportunity to go to another church to invite their 20-30 year olds to join our 20-30 year olds group here at church. The ministries that we are involved in are all in German, so I had to make this announcement in German. I speak some German, but not enough to make a coherent announcement. I asked Michael to help us write it all in German. I did not want to chance splitting their church by something I might say wrong. We arrived at the church and were greeted by the man in charge of the service and asked when I would give my announcement. He told us that it would be during testimony time. The hard thing is sometimes it is a time of prayer request and sometimes it is time of testimonies, so I had to make sure that I picked the right time. The service started and half way through people started sharing prayer request so I waited, then decided this might be the time to make the announcement, because it seemed to shift to testimonies. I whispered to the leader and he told me it was a good time. I waited for some silence and had my statement all prepared in perfect German. I read through the announcement and at the end said, “I had to read it because I am learning German”. After I was all done, the church applauded me. I was somewhat surprised that they would applaud an announcement but didn’t think much about it till I got home. Immediately after the service a lady came up to me and asked how much I understood and I told her things here and there, but understood what was going on, she seemed surprised. She then said she was very impressed at how perfect my German was in the announcement. I just said, “thank you” and carried on to another conversation. Then another lady told me how great my German was especially the written part and then another comment came from another guy. It was not till I got home that it dawned on me that these people thought I, Richard Rudolph had written this, not a German translating it from English to German. I had a good laugh about it later, and thought that I have set a pretty high standard if ever make another announcement in that church again, which means next time Julia will make the announcement.