Still in Żary. Our
group split up to participate in Mass at several cathedrals in town. At the morning Masses we attended, David and I played
Telemann, and Marianne (pictured below) sang several classics from the vocal repertoire. Lovely.
(But cold. The temperature dropped that morning, and it was about 40 degrees
where we were sitting up on the altar of the all-stone Gothic structure. Brrrr.)
That evening, we
played a concert at another cathedral, Holy Mary Church. Per our usual, each
band played one or two songs, including our hip-hop/DJ combo. I don’t think any
of us ever expected to hear hip-hop (albeit theologically-based) performed in
an ancient stone cathedral, but somehow it actually worked in the midst of the diversity of music we were presenting:
classical, jazz, gospel, blues, folk, various kinds of rock n’ roll…
A high school
student named Ana (I changed her name for this blog, since it's public) came up and introduced herself to a few of the musicians
after the concert—she had come to Mass with her parents and then stayed for the
concert. She had ambitions of becoming a translator. The musicians introduced
her to Richard, who said, “Well, ask your parents if you can pack your bags and
come along with us for a few days!” They agreed…so, along she came! Over the
next several days, Ana became a part of our team, and she also started to have
some open, genuine conversations with a few of our team members on faith,
particularly Beau and Regan (the folk/indie brother-sister duo who adopted me
as their violinist for the trip). She was not a believer. --More on Ana later.
After dinner, three
of us girls from the team accepted an invitation for tea at a local teacher’s home. We had
met her on Day 9 at the first high school, in her English class, and we got to
know her a bit over the three subsequent nights as she followed us to the local
venues. Izabel brought us to her cute flat and served us a full dinner,
dessert, wine, and tea, and then her friend Barbara (a teacher at the same
school) invited us up to her flat, just upstairs from Izabel’s, for another
glass of wine. It was just what one would hope for when visiting a new
country—-a peek into a real-life Sunday night with friends in their flats, with
easy, open conversation.
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