Communication 2009 Style

One of the wonderful things about technological advances since we were here 20 yrs ago is access to the Internet now at Mukinge – wireless even! When we were here in ‘88-89, Marguerite and I only had the postal service (as in mail….. as in writing on paper with pen, putting it in an envelope and sending it off ) at our disposal to communicate with loved ones back home. The problem was that while we were here from October to January, we really needed to send off all our correspondence within the first month or so if we had any hope of hearing back from home. Then there was the phenomenon of so-called letters “crossing in the mail” where the communication would be muddled by a not so straightforward give and take exchange.

So, the Internet is great but it too has a few issues. First of all, the upload time here leaves a little to be desired. Opening websites is reminiscent of dial up connection days (click on the address and go cook supper). This varies from day to day and with the time of day in a seemingly random pattern. My family back home and I have found though that the best time to skype is at 7 am my time (10 pm in Langley). Even then the images are 1 frame per 5 seconds and often look like the identity of the person you are conversing with is being protected. Voices sometimes sound like that little blue creature Stitch – electronisized – which makes for an interesting conversation.

Then there is the issue of the delay in transmission. This makes communicating fun especially when “chatting”. A message posted can take from 5-10 seconds to minutes to arrive and often one is responding to something the other person posted several lines back – talk about things “crossing in the mail”.

I also find saying goodbye while chatting difficult. Being relatively new to this all, I’m not sure of the proper etiquette. When ready to sign off I might say – “gotta go, bye” but it seems so abrupt to just close the program – sort of like hanging up without hearing the other person say goodbye. A message like “bye, love you” might come back. Then I feel obligated to raise the ante – “Love you too and miss you a lot”. Then “bff” might come back and….well… you get the picture.

I don’t know if any of you have tried praying over skype. I was having a conversation with my pastor Darren back home (using audio only, not video) about some church business and I felt that it would be the elderly/pastorly thing to do to close off with an internet/skype audio prayer. I went first and was really getting going and, I was, I must say, getting to the best part of my prayer. I was not being thrown off by the delays in “amen”s from Darren (that seemed to me to be coming at most inappropriate inopportune times due to the 5 second delay) but I just kept plowing ahead in my spiritual missionary status fervor. I was in the midst, in fact, of doing something very impressive - quoting a passage of scripture from 2 Chronicles while praying! – something that usually is only done by those of us that are highly spiritual. I was feeling quite impressed with myself when all of a sudden, in the midst of the biblical quote, I heard Darren starting in to his prayer. For some reason he couldn’t hear my prayer (either that or he wasn’t as impressed with my prayer as I was). I had been cut off! In reflecting on it, however, I think God shut the audio off as my “prayer pride” was mounting, in order to take me down at least a notch or 2. I had a good chuckle knowing that God can use defective technology to serve his purposes.