Categories: random, phd, church
Tags: transcription, Moldova, fieldwork, naughty, Christianity, church
Date: 17 September 2007 13:48:44
[I have just tried several times to post this, and in the end gave up and wrote it out long-hand to retype and resend from another internet cafe. The things I do for you, dear readers]
I like that word, serendipity (not as a name though - Neighbours (or was it the other one?) what were you thinking?!). And it happened yesterday, big time.
The girl who has been transcribing my interview tapes left the country this weekend, and I have been really worrying about whom I could get to do it whom I could trust to do a good job, respect confidentiality, etc etc. Really really worrying actually - I can't afford to get them done commercially in the UK, and confidentiality isn't one of the world's most respected issues here (actually I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying that that's one of the issues coming up a lot in my research too). But, a friend who is in the latter stages of pregnancy, at home and bored with lots of time on her hands, and also impressive, efficient, good at everything and absolutely trustworthy, has said that she'll do it, and because she's at home in the day it looks like most of my interviews will be transcribed before I leave the country (in 2 weeks - eek).
The serendipity bit though - when I told her how relieved I was that she had said yes, she told me that actually this was also the answer to her prayers. She and her husband had sat down yesterday morning and realised they were down to their last less than a pound, and had prayed that morning that God would show them where the next money was coming from, because they didn't know. That kind of put my worries into perspective rather.
Am I bad for being surprised at this? I know that people talk about prayer being answered, yet it always seems to happen for other people. I'm always surprised when it happens to me too, and to have been the answer to someone else's prayer at the same time as having mine answered is like double the coincidence. I know when I left madchurch that quite a bit of baby was thrown out with bathwater, and although I feel my faith is more authentic, more "me" now, it's good to be reminded that God isn't just an intellectual construct but does actually still really answer prayers (when I bother to pray them - I'm such a rubbish Christian, really).
I did feel a weeny bit guilty too though, because this all got sorted out at the end of a church service where I dozed in the sermon (like I did last week) and when I was awake I was really distracted by a projected image, one of those hideous (to me) cheesy pictures that you often find in Christian homes, an image of the Earth seen from space with Jesus looking at it with tears in his eyes. Now, if that had been it I could have just ignored it as not really my cup of tea, but it also had a big white speech bubble superimposed onto it and they'd typed the text from 2 Chronicles about "if my people ... will pray" (they're doing a series on the "if my people will humble themselves, pray, seek my face, then I will hear and heal their land" passage, yesterday's was about prayer). Unfortunately, something about that white speech bubble really reminded me of Lolcats, so every time I looked at it I kept trying to think of something naughty to put into it. And (I'm so evil) the funniest thing I could come up with (which will probably only be funny to me, but I'm still giggling thinking of it), given that Jesus had tears in his eyes, was this:
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"ROFLMAO."
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Well I thought it was funny. God help me.