Just a quick post to share my thoughts on the service we got to attend tonight. It was an incredible service full of loud rock ‘n roll music, girls dressed in beautiful white skirts playing tambourines, powerful preaching and the Holy Spirit fully present.
The Alliance Church in Juarez, led by Pastor Tomas, has four services every Sunday. Talk about commitment, these guys go all out twice in the morning and twice in the evening. We just attended the two evening services and I was tired by the end because it was such a high energy service!
I was especially excited with the worship service for a couple reasons. The words were on an overhead projector so I attempted to sing along. And a few of the songs were ones we sing back home. It was SO cool to sing in English while around me my fellow Christian men and women sang in Spanish. We sang ‘The Happy Song’, ‘How Great Thou Art’, ‘How Great Is Our God’, and ‘Mighty to Save’. Church services were one of the areas I struggled in with our first leg of the journey as it’s hard to worship God not knowing what the words are, what is being sung or the message being preached. Tonight, I got to sing, I got to listen and I got to worship. Isn’t God amazing, how He takes what I struggled with and gives me this gift of a service where I could fully worship?!
What a gift it is to worship… I know what an awesome feeling it is to sing songs of worship in another country, in a completely different language, but they are familiar songs that you’ve always known and you can sing them in English. It is such awesome confirmation that God is real as only He could gather followers all over the world like that and give them a common bond and desire to worship like that. So cool that He lets us see that!
Thanks for keeping up with your blog. I have visited from time to time and was thinking about you guys the last few days and wondering where you were at in your journey. Is this the last leg of it? I’m so glad that you’ve had a safe place to sleep each night and been able to meet so many people and gather stories. I love how you feel such a sense of responsibility for these stories, but ultimately God will show you where to go with them and how… you’re really just responsibile to being receptive to Him and consulting Him
I hope all goes well while you are in Mexico.
Hugs,
Amber Wiens