Being of the generation that has to have my grandchildren program the DVD player, I don't claim to be any kind of technical expert. However, with teaching and experience I have been able to learn to operate the DVD player and digital projector to show movies and power points in various places around the country. We often use these for teaching and even evangelism.
But a couple of weeks ago a strange thing happened. Mitzi and I went to a village to work with a pastor of a small church for a special event that he planned. There were quite a number of children there and several families that had never attended the church before, along with some regular attenders.
We were a little late arriving and the activities had already started, but a few of the men set up the screen while I set up the projector and DVD player. Soon everything was ready. I had brought several videos, all of which Jaime, the pastor, and I had used before. Since there were so many children there, Jaime chose one of the cartoon type videos to show. It had a good "value" message, although it wasn't exactly an evangelistic theme.
The Disc was inserted into the player and everything started beautifully. (For me there is still that moment of uncertainty...is it going to work? And then sweet relief when it does.) Only one problem...it was playing in English. No big deal. A small delay, but it wouldn't be any problem to switch it to Spanish. Stop the DVD, go to the menu,and make the change. I stopped it. Pressed the menu button on the remote. The message flashed on the screen, "Invalid Key." I checked. Yes, I pushed the right button. I tried again. Same thing,"Invalid Key." After several frustrating tries I did what every highly skilled technician does. I frantically started pressing buttons, any button, all buttons. Finally, the menu appeared. How? Who knows? But there it was. It wasn't the time to examine the process.
But there was a problem. There was no language option. Several others, but none to change the language. I checked the cover of the DVD case. Yes, it said Spanish was an option. So there were options. Jaime and his wife Carla came to my rescue. They were familiar with the DVD and the equipment. (In fact they have a player exactly like what I was using that another missionary gave them.) After reviewing the situation, we decided to change to another video, still a cartoon.The new DVD was inserted and,to our dismay, the result was the same. The menu was eventually found, but there was no language option. We changed again, to another cartoon video. (As you can imagine, the children were getting restless. The adults were being very polite and waiting patiently for the dumb gringo to get things going.)
Well, to shorten the story, after changing to Jaime's DVD player and getting the exact same result with it and both remotes, we again changed to another DVD. This time it was the story of Jesus from the gospel of Luke. The story is shown with three children following Jesus around and telling the story. By this time we were desperate and trying everything to get the videos into Spanish. Carla brought out an old VHS tape player remote control. Shoot, I'd try anything. I pressed menu. Up popped the menu of the DVD...with the language option. Excitedly I pressed the change button...nothing. I left the menu up, but switched back to the DVD control. It worked! I selected "Spanish" and we watched three children follow a Spanish-speaking Jesus around and narrate the story...in Spanish.
As I said previously, several new families were there who had not been there before and had not expressed faith in Jesus. You figure it out. Was it simply a malfunction, technical or human? Was it a miraculous intervention of God? It definitely was mysterious.
