The church we met in only had one table so the majority of pastors used church benches as their desk to take notes eight hours each day for a week.  The church does not have electricity nor lights (nor plumbing) so we had to work while the light was bright enough to read our bibles.

ABOVE: Outskirts of the village - Nano, Togo.

BELOW: The “catering company” bringing our lunch, usually corn starch patties and soup.

Typical Togolese meal.  Pâte, which is made of corn meal and water and served in a plastic bag, and soup.  Utensils are your right hand. Culturally it is improper to eat with your left hand, unfortunately I am left-handed! One takes a piece of pâte and dip it in the soup.

Because it was near the end of the dry season, there were few vegetables.  Meat was sold to the villages in the south for vegetables. Therefore the only meat we had for soup was goat head/jaw and intestines.

    What was most encouraging was seeing how the teachings have been put into practice.  Often times I have heard people say, “The catechism is old.” “No one wants to learn that.” “It is too hard to memorize.”  

    Indeed it was hard for Pastor Remi.  He only had one catechism, none for his confirmands and only one hymnal.  But what he told me was that the confirmands really wanted to learn the Word of God.  They had confirmation class 2-3 times per week and he would read from the catechism and the confirmands would repeat after him.  Within three months, the entire class memorized the Ten Commandments and the Apostles’ Creed with their explanations from the Small Catechism.  Pastor Remi asked me to make a video so that the Americans could see that the Togolese can learn just as well as they can.  I thought, “Maybe better!”

It was the same with the hymns.  When we first started teaching French Lutheran hymns 18 months ago, we only had enough copies for each of the pastors.  They learned the hymns and have been teaching them in the villages, without additional copies, without a piano, without an organ, without a radio, but with their God given voices to praise and recount the grace of Jesus.

Recordings from the introduction and first teaching of these hymns at the seminary in Togo are found below.  More hymnals, catechisms, Bibles, and training are requested!