The Sound of Community: Saturday, May 25, 2024

By Laura Granger from Wheaton College

When I was a kid, I loved Adventures in Odyssey. From the back of my family’s minivan, I could imagine away the hot, leather chair and instead sit in a back-corner booth at Whit’s End. Like tasting something I’d only smelled, I could see Whit walk into the imagination-station after I only heard the door click shut.

Yesterday, I created a short podcast. It was only a couple minutes long, but it told the story of a Hispanic community that had come together to raise money to buy a church building for Iglesia Pentecostal Unida Hispana. It wasn’t a talk-show style podcast, so I couldn’t ramble on and on about the wonderful people I met and the amazing food I ate. I had to arrange sound recordings captured by my team on the field to create something an audience could see after only listening.

It wasn’t easy. For the last three years, I trained myself to write sound into a story, not to compile a story from sound. It was an honor to do so with a subject that sounded so beautiful. I couldn’t help but smile as I listened back to recordings of women laughing as they sold enchiladas. While sitting back in the computer lab, I closed my eyes and remembered what it had been like to stand under the pavilion where it all took place.

There’s something special about knowing every sound was real. Don’t get me wrong, I love to escape to the fictional world of Whit’s End. But using sound to travel back in time to an actual historical event is even better. I was encouraged by the ministry La Iglesia Pentecostal extended to Sioux Center, and I’m glad I had the chance to catch its sound on tape.