Church in Spanish!!

Last night I went to church with María Fernanda, Pichi, Antonella, and Rita. It's the first time I've been to church while I've been in Ecuador, and María Fernanda said she was sorry they hadn't invited me earlier because they (she, Pichi, and Anto) go almost every Sunday night.

It was a big, beautiful church up on a hill, with a large, auditorium-like sanctuary. The church was called Verbo, which means “Verb.” There was a beautiful painting of three crosses on the front wall, with projection screens on either side for the words of the songs and the PowerPoint slides that the leader flipped through during the sermon. The service was very contemporary, with praise music and guitars and a drum set. Communion was super-informal; you just went up to the table whenever you felt like it during the appointed song and took a piece of bread and a cup of juice and went back to your seat. That's so different from my church, where our music comes from the organ and the choir and handbells. We sing from hymnals and the elders serve Communion with well-practiced choreography. However, thanks to my experiences at summer camp at Geneva Hills and the Presbyterian Youth Triennium, I can appreciate both contemporary and traditional worship services. I think I'll always want to attend the traditional services with which I've grown up on a regular basis, but sometimes I really enjoy the less formal contemporary worship like last night's.

The first part of the service was all music, and the guy playing the piano and leading the band looked almost exactly like one of my dad's best friends, who is definitely not Ecuadorian, but I think he does go to a church very much like Verbo. It was really bizarre. Then another guy came out and led a prayer. He gave some announcements and talked about a project the youth group is doing and then he asked if there were any people in the congregation who were there for the first time. Pichi made me raise my hand, and a girl came over and kissed me on the cheek (which is the standard greeting here, like a handshake at home) and gave me a very pretty rose and some pamphlets about the church and its ministries. We had Communion, and then there was kind of a break in the service. People just got up and socialized, and they asked anyone who was there for the first time to go to the back corner. I was going to go anyways, but this lady who was also carrying a flower came over to me and latched onto my arm and half-dragged me to the back of the room. That was a bit awkward. We got crackers and really tasty juice, and then church members talked to each of the newbies individually. I talked to a very nice young woman who asked if I'd come with Pichi, and I said yes, I'm a student staying with María Fernanda's parents, and she asked if I was going to be in Ecuador for a while. I explained that I've been here for nine weeks and I'm leaving on Friday. She asked if I go to a church at home, and I said yes, a Presbyterian one, and she surprisingly knew what that meant. Rita and María Fernanda didn't really understand the concepts of Protestant or Presbyterian when I tried to explain them. It seems that in Ecuador, you're either “Catholic,” which means “Catholic,” or “Christian,” which means “I believe in Jesus but not the Pope.”

After the break we sang another song and then a guy gave the sermon. I don't think he was really the pastor, because in the car on the way home Pichi referred to him as “the man who gave the message tonight.” The sermon was about plans, how we make all these plans for ourselves (and then likely don't follow through on them!), but God has His own plans for us, and they're “good and accepted and perfect.” (I forget what verse that's from, maybe something from Nehemiah. There were a lot of books quoted last night.) God definitely brought me to Verbo last night to hear that message, because as a junior in college with three humanities concentrations, I'm constantly trying to figure out what my plan is for the next phase of my life. I went through a not-so-minor freak-out a few weeks ago, because I realized I was really sick of Spanish (obviously an issue when you're in Ecuador). I was tired of speaking it, tired of writing it, and when I was listening to a lecture or a tour or a video in Spanish, I just couldn't make myself concentrate on what was being said. As we near the end of this trip, though, the Spanish has been getting easier and more enjoyable again, and last night I was able to focus on and understand everything in the service. I was really struck by the fact that I was worshiping in Spanish, and I was reminded of how prayer and worship and Christian fellowship aren't restricted by something as trivial as language.

Over the last month or so I've been praying a lot about what I'm supposed to do with my life, and I think I have a general idea of where God is leading me. I don't want to talk about it yet, but I'm pretty excited and I'm seeing some possibilities for building a really cool ministry. I'm pretty sure I don't want Spanish to be the primary focus of my career, but there's no doubt that speaking a second language can be a huge asset in a number of ways. I still think it's a beautiful and interesting language, and I know I'll need it when I travel, and if I can use it to somehow do God's work, then it's definitely something I want to keep studying.