Our team has now had two lessons in Bengali, the prominent language in this part of India. That, however, has nothing to do with what this post is really about.
Today Todd brought "his" (really WMF's) guitar along to Nabo Jibon. He played some songs for the handicapped kids and I joined him on vocals. We started with a bunch of worship songs we know, but did some other stuff too... including a kid's song we realized part way through that we didn't know all of the words to. The kids seemed to love it. Some listened, some danced (as much as they were able anyway). Todd sang the Spanish song about the faith of a mustard seed and moving mountains. I can't tell you the name of the song since it's in Spanish. This caught the attention of several volunteers from Spain. They loved hearing it. I suspect they don't get a whole lot of Spanish in Kolkata.
After the kids were in bed for their post-lunch naps, we moved on to the TB ward and general ward. We sang exclusively worship music there, with a lot more hymns mixed in than with the kids. Although the patients probably couldn't understand most of the lyrics, they clearly enjoyed it and clapped for us when we finished. Thanks to our limited knowledge of Bengali we were able to understand one of the patients. "Jeshu gan" (Jesus song). I don't know exactly why, but it was really encouraging that they knew we were singing about Jesus.
Todd and I won't do that every day, but it was clear that music is a language that can communicate across language barriers.
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