Took a photo of my desktop speaker to signify load sound.
Quite a while ago, I shared on my Hive post how the area that I live was once a very rural place with very few residents which makes houses far from each other and that was the reason why to relocate on this place and in deciding where to build our home, my parents has decided to buy the land, a household away from the road in order to avoid the noise and pollution brought by the vehicles but still have easy access to the road. For a long time, the land in front of has was left unoccupied but as time goes by, our area becomes more and more developed with different housing projects that transfers many people from different parts of the country and by 2016, all of a sudden, a Baptist church was built on the empty land in front of our house. Of course, as the population of a place increases, people with different beliefs will be more diverse and I said that because majority of the old residents were Catholic including me but the old residents have accepted this change and let them to do what they want as they now rightfully own the land. As for me, I'm not really much of a religious person and I was fine with people to believe what they want as long as they do not impose their beliefs on me. The problem was that this church has been very loud and noisy which started to became a big disturbance to the families surrounding their church.
I made an illustration to show how my place have change trough time and how close the church from our house is.
It's not that big of a church. On my estimate, it has the capacity of 20-30 people but to be more comprehensible of his sermon, the pastor would use speakers so that it can be heard by his attendees and honestly, they were quite mindful of their surroundings and adjust the volume of their speakers accordingly. The problem really begins when they started to have youth band. As they do practice the instruments and the songs they will sing for their Sunday mass, they tend to increase the volume of the speakers to the point that it started to become an annoyance to the nearby residents and with our home being very close to them, the noise they produce has become just unbearable. The sound of their speakers was so loud that I could feel its vibrations to the ground and I cannot even watch TV.
In order to stopped this, me and some of my neighbors have talked to the pastor to tell their youth band to tone down their speakers when they practice and the youth seems to comply but just after some weeks, they begins to be really loud again and so we talk to the pastor for the second time and the youth comply once again to be loud again just after a while so my neighbors were thinking of having another discussion to the pastor. I on the other hand exempt myself in joining them as I think that it would just be a repeat of the last time.
Fighting Fire With Fire
With words seems to not get through anymore, I decided not to join my neighbors on talking it out with the church pastor. Instead, during their Sunday mass, when it was the time for the youth band to play their song, I also started to play songs on my speaker and raised its volume on maximum. The speaker at home was not as powerful as what the church uses but it was they actual performance so they played very mildly so I was able to overpower them which I continued until the mass ended. I was thinking that for them to be able to empathize with us, they need to experience the same thing which we were experiencing for them to know how much disturbance they are making. For the next two weeks, I continued to do the same thing and by that time, another neighbor also started to play their karaoke really loud during the sermon. It was a chaos because my speaker was clashing with our neighbors Karaoke so I can only imagine the disturbance it created during the pastor's sermon.
That same day to pastor gets to knock in our door to ask us to reduce the volume of our speaker during their sermon out of respect for their church. I ask him if he already talk to my neighbor that plays Karaoke but says he goes to me first because I've been doing it for weeks. In response to his request, first I told him this:
"In order to be respected, one must also respect the others. When you're church came here, the people around here have accepted you despite the difference in beliefs and lets you operate without any interruption. However, we told you that your youth band has been causing disturbance and has been continuously disrespecting us old residents here. I do not know if its because they used to live on loud area that is why they were okay with it or if you are an ineffective pastor that is why your youth won't listen to you but this place used to be very quiet and the residents here loves their peace. We do not want them to stop their practice, all we want is for them is to practice in moderation. But if they want to continue to be loud, we will also continue what we do."
The pastor has became very remorseful about his youth band and promises that to me that he will be talking with the band and would stop them from playing if necessary so I told him that I would talk with my neighbor to stop what were doing as long as he would be true on his promise. Ever since that talk, their youth band becomes mindful when they practice and do not play as loud anymore. It seems that their pastor can talk some sense to them if they really want to so I do not know why it took so long for them to finally listen but now I was just happy that our peace was back which as the time passes by the new residents has started to also adapt.
There were times that no matter how you try to talk to people the words you we speak just never gets through them so sometimes in order for them to realize things is for them to experience the same thing as the saying goes to "Give someone a dose of their own medicine." and that was the case as our new church neighbor cause to us. Thankfully, after they experience the same thing, they started to change their ways and until now we were able to coexist within our place.
That was it for this post. Thank you and see you at the next one.
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