Holy Things

This reader's choice post will be dedicated to Laura, who wanted to know what I do for church here. I am very greatful to have found a wonderful church here, called Iglesia Cristiana Prosperidad (or Prosperity Christian Church- Prosperidad is the name of the street it's on; it doesn't mean that everyone in the church is rich). It is a very small church made up of several families that are related to each other and a few other families and random people, as well as several international students from a few countries who attend there too. There is a good mix of all ages of people, but I always enjoy sitting in the row in front of the elderly ladies... they can be pretty funny. There might be 60 people or so... but I'm bad at estimating numbers of people, especially when they're packed together, so I don't know. The church building is very small, the bottom floor is the santuary with a stage and chairs they set up, and the top floor has rooms for the children's sunday school. There is good motivation to get there a few mintutes early since the latecomers have to sit on pillows on the stage.

All of the people in the church have been incredibly caring and friendly to us, especially to the few of us from Cedarville who go there and our Italian friend. Normally it takes a while for Spanish people to accept new people, but the people in the church have made us feel at home almost from the beginning. I think it helps that we went to special things like missions conference and a few sunday night services that not everybody goes to, and a couple of the other girls have been able to go on some of their retreats. We always have lots of people to talk to, but as soon as we walk in the room, the grandmas take first dibs and grab us ("hola, mi hija!").

The pastor of the church is an older gentleman who is stepping down some, so he alternates preaching with a few of the other men. I can understand pretty much every word in the services, mainly because I'm familiar with that set of vocab from reading my Spanish Bible. The services are around 2-2.5 hours long and are a little different than the ones at Heritage. We start with singing, prayer, and scripture reading, but it is very flexible. The band chooses a few songs to start with, and then people call out ones they want to sing, or different men randomly stand up and pray or read scripture passages and talk about them. After a while, one of the men will give a mini-sermon, usually from Corinthians or one of the gospels, and then we'll take communion (yes, it's grape juice), sing another song, take the offering, and give announcements. Then the kids leave for Sunday school and they start the sermon.

The only downside to the church is that it's located in Triana, the part of the city on the other side of the river, so it takes us somewhere around 50 minutes to walk there, longer if we take the bus. A lot of people try to persuade us to come back for the evening service, and we have been a couple times, but it is usually just too far to walk twice a day. The girls from Cedarville used to have our own prayer meeting Sunday nights, and some still do, but I don't go anymore. I either hang out with people from the Bible study or have to finish up homework.

Yes, 3 of us from Cedarville have found a really good Bible study for young people (college students and graduated singles and couples) that we go to on Wednesday nights from around 9-12 (yeah, it's late). It is more or less associated with GBU (the Spanish version of Campus Crusade) but is made up of people from a few different churches. It's usually at a guy's house really close to mine, but at times different people want to host it so we move around the city. Different people lead it each time, but we always start by eating sandwiches and snacks and talking for a while. Several of my Spanish friends are from this group. Most the people are Spanish, but there are usually a couple Americans, a British girl, a Columbian, an Italian, and a guy from somewhere like Croatia. Here's a couple shots of the group. Chao.