And we're back in the real world...

though, truthfully, I think the Lebanese have more "real world" experiences than we France-dwellers and the highly protective government who serves us.

Sunday we did get to Wadih's church, All Saints Church, Beirut, where they celebrated the baptism of an American security specialist present in Beirut to help train the Lebanese police, the departure of another such person at the end of his tour of duty, and an excellent testimony/sermon from a Dutch missionary who works IN the Palestinian camps (one awesome story of actually talking to the Hezbollah leadership about his faith!!). The church building itself appears to be fairly new, but I think it replaced an older building on the same site. The site used to be right on the waterfront in the central business district, but is now a few hundred meters from the sea due to some land reclamation. There are huge building projects all around the church, as it is in the prestige quarter of Beirut.

After the service, the church held a community lunch in which we partook - more humus, more unleavened bread with meat in, but also a refreshingly western-style cake to celebrate the baptism (the church blog has photos of the baptism, by the way). We met up with a number of people that we had already met during the tour - Karen (the clinical psychologist), Greg and Kristina from the Haigazian University, the staff of Youth For Christ, to name just a few.

After that we went to Johnny's Cocktails for the best fruit cocktail smoothy-type drinks in town! These things really are good, but very heavy on the stomach due to the heavy clotted cream-like stuff they use to make them. Johnny's is the same we visited after the Night of the Shredders. I didn't mention: when we visited on Friday night, the place was about to close (after all it WAS 2:00 am), but they stayed open especially for us!

During this time of indulgence we had a very productive debrief with Wadih and Lindy.

We then returned to the school to pack, before being picked up by Wadih and family for a farewell meal of mezze at a small restaurant in the center of town! "Mezze?" you ask. Well the Lebanese version is basically lots of tasters of Lebanese dishes - including, of course, various forms of humus (I'm beginning to get a little tired of humus... NAH, not really - BRING IT ON!). Karen was again there, and was dutifully plagued anew with questions (we have a reputation to keep up), along with Philippe, who was the compere on Saturday night - turns out he was brought up in Boulder, Colorado, as was Lisa my wife!

After hugs and exchanges of gifts with Wadih and family and, back at LES, Jamileh, we got to bed fairly early, to prep for the early rise on Monday...

which was at about 5:00am in order to get to the airport for our 8:30 flight. We checked in and tried to get Jon (and his essential support team, of course) a place in 1st class due to his extremely optimistic connection schedule in Istanbul. Unfortunately, the check-in girl seemed to interpret "would it be at all possible to have us all sit together in 1st class?" as "could you please separate us as widely as possible at the back of economy class?" - oh well!

The flight was uneventful, the arrival slow, and the disappearance of Jon precipitous, once he'd made it through the 100's waiting at passport control. We learned later that he had in fact made all his connections despite being stopped by security numerous times on account of the number of countries that had stamped his passport on Monday! The rest of us headed to Istanbul by the more sedate means of bus and boat, where I stayed with Chris and Sarah for the night (my travel agent not having been as trusting of the vagaries of international travel as Jon's).

Tuesday, then, took me back to Ataturk Airport in Istanbul for my own second-and-third leg flights to Paris, where I was met by my good friend Lance. 20 minutes later I was enjoying a boisterous reunion with the family, handing out pressies (Turkish Delight for all) and recounting anecdotes of the trip - which would have been entirely unnecessary if they had JUST READ THIS BLOG!

There ya go - Lebanon 2009 is over - but I'll probably post a few sentences of post-tour thoughts in the days to come. Thanks for all the support, fiduciary and otherwise - it is only with the support of others that such trips (be it mine, or those of other short-term missionaries and tent-makers) are possible, and the good news of Jesus Christ and his saving sacrifice can be spread to those in darkness.

The Best of the Bands

OK, so there IS school on Saturday! Although the battle of the horns didn't transpire in the morning, the school bell continued its inexorable marking of lesson times, curtailing my sleep again. Well, OK, I did manage to remain embedded until about 11:00am. At that time Jamileh knocked on the door and said that she was making lunch for us. Therefore breakfast was reduced or even skipped by some of us.

Lunch was wonderful, if unpronounceable, and was followed by the now habitual hours on the computers responding to emails, sitting out power cuts, and writing blogs (and, when bored, bugging wives on Facebook messenger). These power cuts, it turns out, affect every neighborhood in Beirut for 3 hours a day - we are lucky not to have experienced their full effect since everywhere we have been seems to have been equipped with their own generator that kicks in when the power cut hits! Yet again the weather was cold and wet, making for a very dismal view from the computer room windows.

At 6:15pm the taxi arrived.

Oh COME ON!!! Just how hard is it to tell a taxi driver "Go to the Lebanese Evangelical School, pick up 4 guys and take them to such-and-such-a-place?? Either Wadih has far greater faith in our knowledge of Beirut and Arabic than he has a right to assume, or the taxi company phone service operators need rockets up their rear ends! Yes the taxi driver AGAIN turned up having no idea who he was there to collect nor where he was to take them - and not able to speak English! Happily THIS one had decent French so I was able to tell him "The Doctor's Union Building" in words and signs that got the general idea across to him, and we arrived with no further incident.

"The Doctor's Union" - not a phrase that immediately conjures up images of classic rock venues such as London's Hammersmith Odeon, or New York's CeeBeeGeeBees, but the fact is that the building does have a very nice 700-seater auditorium in its basement, which Wadih had managed to secure for the evening for his "Best of the bands" competition, along with adequate lighting and sound equipment for an event of this nature. The building itself is in a fairly central and accessible location as well.

We arrived to organized chaos - except that it wasn't organized! Takween, a Christian thrash metal band, who kinda co-sponsored the event by offering one of the prizes (a month of rehearsals at their rehearsal studios), were doing their sound check. Thrash metal, and its close cousins death metal, metal core, speed metal, extreme-ear-damage-metal etc etc, is very big in Lebanon (see the previous post) so using it to convey the Christian message could prove very fruitful even if it doesn't meet with everyone's approval. I forgot to mention that we had already met a couple of the Takween members on Thursday - that evening HAD attracted 4 non-staff and non-family members to Cherry's, even if it was by specific invitation (from Wadih).

Most of the other bands were hanging around having done their sound checks (mercifully for us :-)) - many of these (11 including us) were not Christian bands. Wadih was pulling out his hair because his security team had phoned to say they weren't coming, so he was trying to get some of his employees to act as security. There were also the inevitable problems with sound, light, video projection etc. At least for THIS event we weren't doubling as stage crew so we could sympathize but we would probably have just been in the way had we tried to help.

At last our turn came to sound check - which went off OK - no decent bass monitor (surprise surprise), stage sound WAY too loud etc, but otherwise fine. We then mingled with the other bands, and also took some time out to pray for the effectiveness of the evening and to have Burger King Whoppers!!! Yes, I know, they do not qualify as Haut Cuisine Libanais, but Burger King does not exist in France so it's always nice to have maybe one when I'm in a country that does welcome them (or at least tolerate them) - and it WAS a small one, not one of those "Supersized GigaMegaHyperWhoppers with extra meat and cheese".

The way the evening was supposed to work is that each of the 8 competing groups had who had signed up had been given (or sold, not sure which) 100 tickets that they were to sell on to their fans. During the course of the evening each band would play two songs, or for 10 minutes (we were never quite certain which). The fans were supposed to come, hear the music, and then at the end, vote for the band they preferred.

Takween, ourselves, and Resident Alien - a pop-rock group from the Youth For Christ organization, and thus peopled with members we had already met (including Lyndi on bass) - were guest bands, not in competition. During the vote and the count, Resident Alien would play one song, then we would play 4 and then announce the winner (Takween played earlier in the evening).

And, for the most part, that is indeed how the evening unfolded. Five of the competitors were also at the thrash end of the metal spectrum, but there were a couple of more Led Zeppelin-ish bands and one that was positively popish. The fans came and went from the actual auditorium as interest peaked and waned in each band - and unfortunately a few used the building's atrium as a smoking and drinking venue (out of the sight of the make-shift security team), but really nothing very bad happened and control of the largely non-Christian crowd was just about maintained.

The second to last band, named Purgatory, tried to argue with the compere when they were told to leave the stage after their two songs, but quickly acquiesced when they were informed that they were 5 seconds from being disqualified! The last band then arrived, and the drummer promptly split the bass drum skin (probably the most abused surface of the evening) with his blistering double pedal technique. That took a good 15 minutes to repair with bits of tape retrieved from around the building. They performed their second song and then tried to start a third. Upon being told to leave the stage the bass player mooned the compere! Ah, we are a fun-loving breed, us bass players!

We played to about 250 people and, as on Friday, went down VERY well, probably partly due to us breaking the monotony of thrash that had pervaded the evening. We then announced the winner - Purgatory!!! They were breathing a collective sigh of relief at having heeded their 5 second warning, then! Again the short performance prompted a number of discussions, CD sales, and fan contact sheet completion, thus enabling followup to occur.

Each of the 4 of us was then interviewed for the video record of the evening, after which we were transported back to the school by Lyndi, leaving poor Wadih and his stage crew with the unenviable task of clearing up the Doctor's Union ready for surgery on Monday. Now that sounds selfish, but you have to understand that in Lebanon it appears to be the case that if someone has committed to do something, they PERSONALLY do it (with their planned team if necessary) and NEVER ask for on-the-spot help, and very very rarely accept offers of such help - we would have been in the way had we stayed.

We arrived back at the school by midnight, with the promise of being collected the following day at 10:00am to go to Wadih's church. That meant a bit of a lie-in - providing the school didn't run on SUNDAYS too!!!

And thus the playing portion of the tour ended!