New Experiences

*just a note - I wrote this on August 17th. We don't have steady internet yet, so I can only get on whenever I find the connection.


Saturday night I attended my first church service at CEAD. CEAD (Centro Evangelistico) is the church and school where I will be teaching this next year. The church has an attendance of about 5 thousand and they have four different services throughout the week; of which we are required to attend at least one. Usually they have a translator available, but this night they were not able to provide that service. So it was sort of frustrating for me to not understand what was happening or being said/sung. During worship I tried to sing along, but I didn’t want to just sing and not know what I was singing. There was a point where I just closed my eyes and listened to everyone worshiping God. That was when I was able to join with everyone in worship. I didn’t have to be singing the same words as them, but I was able to worship with them in spirit knowing that they are praising God. It struck me anew how it doesn’t matter what language we speak, God hears it all and it is beautiful to Him.

After the service some of us went out to the movie theater to watch 21. Now, this is not something I would usually go out to see, but I wanted to be social and get to know the other North American teachers. Now I know what you are thinking - if I had a hard time understanding the church service, how in the world could I possibly understand a movie? Most of the movies they show are in English with Spanish subtitles – and I asked for the ticket myself (with some coaching beforehand).

All in all the evening was a time of revelation to me with some of my assumptions and thoughts. It was also a great time of connection with my fellow teachers. Although, I am excited about the English service we are going to on Sunday.