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This morning, we went to a local Nazarene church for Sunday morning worship service. It was missionary Sunday, and it was exciting! They had two special speakers, and the music was fun. The church used to be a house and I was told that I was sitting in the area that used to be the kitchen. They have some land behind the church that they have great plans for -- as soon as they are able to, they will be working together to build a larger church building behind the current building, and I believe later this year, a Work and Witness team will be helping them construct the driveway back to that area.
Most houses are built directly adjacent to the house next to them, so their previous location (which had also been formerly a house) was going to be difficult to add on to. A local farmer had some land that he sold to them, and he bought their previous property from them as a kind of down payment. This generous offer has made it so they now have a location near two schools, in a good area to reach the community. The people are so welcoming there, I can't wait to see what's going to happen next!
The service was (obviously) all in Spanish, but we did our best to find stray words here and there that we recognized. For me, I recognized most of the words, but my brain wasn't fast enough to put them together into understandable sentences before the next phrase ran by. I wrote down several words that I didn't recognize and will be looking them up pretty soon. I did catch that we were reading in Luke 5, the Bible story about Jesus telling the fishermen to throw the nets off the other side of the boat, when they had been fishing all night and hadn't caught anything. (It turns out that the Spanish word for "nets" is "redes") The speaker, Helen, was the same girl that took us to Palí, the grocery store down the road, a couple days ago! She mentioned that when these fishermen were told to do it, they didn't tell Jesus that they were the ones that knew what was best, they just did it. She said if a parent tells a child to get away from something, then the child needs to know that they can trust the parent with their commands. They shouldn't just ask "Well, why?" instead, they need to just do it. In the same way, when God leads us to "cast our nets" and witness to those around us, we need to just do it. Not sit around making up excuses.
In one paragraph, I covered pretty much everything that I understood in the whole service. There was a lot more, but that's all I could understand. Oh, and Helen saying that she feels called to missions. Our Spanish is getting better, but it's a slow road, I suppose. When we got home, I got completely exhausted all of the sudden. I think it's just the fact that we've been saturated in Spanish for the past couple hours. Or maybe it's because we still wake up around 6am every day (which would have been 8am in Indiana)
A little bit ago, the whole town sounded like it erupted in cars honking. I think that means that there was a fútbol match that just ended.
This evening, the Work and Witness coordinator of the region (I think that's her title) had us over for some delicious coffee and.... um... I don't remember what they're called, but it was like someone made a giant flat biscuit and then cut it into slices. Really tasty, though. Liz just said it's Biscotti. It was fun to spend some time getting to hear some stories about things that are happening with churches in the country, as well as getting more information about other things we may be a part of in the future.
Fun Spanish of the Day -- In Spanish speaking areas, Work and Witness is called "Testimonio y Trabajo" (Testimonies and Work)
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