Monday, February 1, 2010

The Rock Barack River Trip

The Rock Barack River Trip was organized to recreate the a route that Watkin Roberts used to take back in the early 1900’s. He traveled the Barack River by boat and delivered rice and preached along the way.

Before I get into that, one huge highlight of the Centenary for me that I left out of the last post was when I got to represent Watkin Roberts during the carrying in of a page of the 1898 of the Gospel of John. That was the edition that Watkin Roberts first sent to the Hmar tribe. The grandson of the native missionary who accompanied Watkin Roberts, along with some other relatives, and I carried it to the front of the assembly hall and then handed it over to the grandson of the man who was the chief of Senvon at the time of Watkin Roberts. It was a neat experience.

After arriving at our campsite on Monday evening, we set up our tent and ate our dinner. The evening service was already in full swing by the time we got there.

Each day’s schedule was basically the same. The morning service was followed by the morning meal, and then we would load up the boats and head out. There was usually one scheduled stop during the day and then we would arrive at our destination.

Notice that I said one “scheduled” stop. I always knew that Dr. Ro and Mawii were well known and well respected in this region, but I had no idea that it was to this scale. In many of the little villages we passed, people would stand along the banks, just to be able to see Dr. Ro and Mawii pass. And some of the villages wanted them to stop. So we would stop and Dr. Ro would talk to the people from the boat. So besides the scheduled stop each day, there were also a few other stops. And they got a well deserved hero’s welcome at each stop.

On the second night, we camped out at a beautiful spot along the river, and one the third night we stayed at people’s houses in the village of Ankhasu. Our hosts there were awesome, and after two nights of sleeping in a tent along the river, a bed felt really good! On the fourth and final night of the trip, we had a big final service in Hmarkawlien.

Again, words don’t do justice to the experiences we had on the river trip. It was an amazing time with old friends and a great time of meeting new ones.

The next morning (Friday) we flew from Silchar to Imphal and then drove here to Churachandpur where we are now. Churachandpur is when most of the former India Children’s Choir children live and we have been having a great time hanging out with all of them.

Michael

1 comment:

Lalremlien Neitham said...

Its barak, not barack obama.