Playing and Preaching

For the past 2 weekends my schedule has had me at what I consider to be my "home" church here, the church of my host family, Primavera. I am lucky enough to also be with them for the following two weekends as well. When I don't have anything else to do on weekends, I spend my time there, even if I am not scheduled to be there. Primavera is where I hold my guitar classes and where I start teaching English next week. Primavera has a youth group of about 10-15 teens, a Sunday School attendance of about 35, and their worship service usually has about 30 people or so attending. Since my host dad and his father are the pastors of this church, they have wanted to make sure that my time there has been well utilized. They have basically planned out every minute of every Saturday and Sunday that I am with them, which is great.

My Saturday's so far have been pretty much spent with the youth group. They begin at 9:30 in the morning with visitation. Two of the youth and I go around the neighborhood and visit the youth that usually are at our meetings and invite them to come that night and to join us for some volleyball in the afternoon or some ping pong in the morning. Then we head over to the church and break out the paddles for some intense ping pong action until lunch time. For lunch, I go and eat with a family of the church and spend about an hour or so visiting with them in their home.

The afternoons are spent out on the field playing volleyball. Since it is out in the park, we have lots of kids come and play, and try to get them to come to the service at night, but so far, that's not working as well as we had hoped. After playing volleyball for 3 hours and having your arms about fall off, I get about an hour to shower and have dinner in another home before the youth service. Their youth service consists of a few songs, some games, and then a lesson by the pastor.

This past weekend I rediscovered something about myself that I don't like and am trying to change. I don't like to lose. Now those of you that know me well may find this hard to believe. I don't know how many of you have been around my during or a few hours after a UNC loss, but its not pretty. I am a pretty competitive person, and sometimes this is not a good thing. When playing sports, it is the same way. I have to do the best I can, and if I don't, I get "upset." One time I drop kicked my baseball glove across the outfield during a church league game...yes...church league. So that’s just an example, but I don't like to lose, it makes me "grumpy" as some people have described me. This came to light again while playing volleyball on Saturday. I was on a team that wasn't bad, but wasn't playing like they wanted to win. For some strange reason, they were out there to just play and have fun! Is that possible? Then I got to thinking...yeah, that is what it is supposed to be about, not who wins or loses...but that you are playing together, making friendships, and having a good time. I felt pretty bad for being so competitive, especially in something that really didn't matter. Actually, all this didn’t come to me until later that night. I spent the afternoon pretty much being a sore loser. The realization came to me during our youth service. We were divided into groups…competing against one another in building a tower using newspaper and tape. The other group ran out of tape, and I offered to give them some. Everyone else in the group didn’t want to because we would definitely win if they didn’t have any tape. But I gave them some with the reply, “We are all Christians here.” When those words left my mouth, I was like wow…did I just say that. Then I started reflecting on the afternoon and how I had acted. What was the difference then and when I was playing sports or watching basketball! So, now I have a job to do. (Although I think the basketball part will be a challenge!)

This past Saturday, after all that was over with, my work really began. I was on to preach on Sunday! I had to translate my sermon that night. I had written it in English, and needed to write it out in Spanish…with the aid of a computer of course. I finally got home about midnight. Sunday morning I had Eduardo look over it and make some corrections and then I was ready to go.

I was a little nervous, but I have found that I don’t get too worked up about getting up in front of people here…mainly because I have to do it all the time, and I know that I am not going to be perfect, so I just don’t worry about it. I had to read the whole thing, but I am pretty sure everyone could understand what I was trying to get across. My sermon was on how as Christians, we are all called to be missionaries, whether that means leaving your home, or ministering in your neighborhoods, where you are.

This weekend, the youth have a beach trip planned for Sunday. I am looking forward to that, even though that will probably be more tiring than what I normally do!

New Photos!

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