New Church

 

So tonight we decided return to the church we tried last time. We arrived at the church and were glad to see that we did have the right service time (5:00). We were greeted very warmly by several members of the congregation and also the pastor who is a missionary.  He warned told us that  the service could get quite raucous, more so than we were used to anyway. He was right. The music portion of the service lasted for about 45 minutes and it was a party. A man named Isreal came and stood next to me and he was especially animated. He did startle me a little bit because as he was walking up behind me he began to clap. I come from a long line of obnoxiously loud clappers and I pride myself on my ability to awaken the dead with my claps but Isreal was on a different level. After his first clap I thought that someone had just fired a revolver in close proximity to my head. Out of fear that another shot would be fired I didn’t turn around. His next clap had me convinced that someone outdoors was lobbing M-80’s into the sanctuary and that the explosives were landing under my seat. I was relieved/shocked to find that it was a mere mortal and that he wasn’t angry but joyful. I watched his hands out of the corner of my eye in order to better understand how he was able to produce this noise. My only conclusion is that somewhere before impact his hands were breaking the sound barrier and creating a sonic boom. He was great though and asked me tons of questions about English words during the service. The music went so long that the Pastor didn’t really preach. We were a little disappointed that we didn’t get to hear the Word of God but we were really happy to be included in the fellowship. There were some Americans at the church too and they informed us of a Bible study and some other fellowship opportunities. Isreal, as it turns out is a Spanish teacher at one of the Universities and he volunteered to tutor us in Spanish! I don’t know if we will go back next week or go to one of the other churches on our list but we can always go back to English Church. Check it out at http://theenglishchurch.com/