The other day Shelby and Ashley were going to a Church service with this family we had met and I went along, partly because I was curious and partly just as the guy to accompany them, so I wasn´t expecting much. It ended up being a Church of God and was in basically a converted small house or other building in Jinotepe right along the Pan American Highway. There were maybe 30 or so chairs set up, and there ended up only being around 15 other people besides the three of us, so I was a little intimidated with us being the only Americans obviously. The service started with worship which consisted of 5 or so of the ladies just taking turns singing into the microphone as two men played a keyboard and guitar. But the keyboard was set to a setting best described as polka music and never matched the singing and only rarely did it make musical sense, while the guitar may or may not have even been plugged in.
At one point I was just so at peace with the situation, looking out the window and seeing people making a fire in an oil drum as dusk approached and trucks drove by on the Pan American Highway, an intense organ jamming away, people belting out songs in Spanish at the top of their lungs that I could not understand but could feel their passion and love for God, and the very often shouts of ¨Gloria de Dios¨ raining down over the singing for no apparent reason than to just bring God glory. It was one of those surreal experiences where time just stops and you can take it all in.
But after that God really took us out of our comfort zone as the ladies asked the three of US to go lead a song. If you know me well that´s the LAST thing I would want to do, I´d speak any day in front of people over singing in front of them. But we went up and struggled through Mighty to Save, Lord We Lift Your Name on High in Spanish, and then closed with a reasonable Amazing Grace. Our songs were nothing compared to theirs but we worshiped God in our own way and made fools of our selves for Him. After all that the pastor got up and gave a message. He talked on John 4 and the Samaritan woman at the well with Jesus and was so intense and almost yelled the whole time. I paid attention for it all even though I understood only small words like ¨man¨ and ¨woman¨ but every once in awhile I would get ¨¡agua viva!¨ which was when Jesus was telling the woman he had living water for her, or so I´m guessing. After the sermon we prayed and basically left. Only then did I find out that it was actually a Tuesday night women´s service, although there were like 5 other men there. But it was just such a unigue experience to see people worshiping God so passionately in different ways than I´m used to, and I thank God he let me go into a random Church in Jinotepe and experience Him in that way.
