December 3, Sunday
After looking at two apartments in Miraflores on Saturday, we went to Ricky’s church.
They were having a special youth meeting.
Ricky arrived early to set up the lighting for the drama and we walked around in Miraflores for a while.
As we went along a side street, there was an open area with small bakery.
They had “elephant ears” in a bakery case and some cakes.
We bought a couple of the “ears” and continued on our trek.
They were quite delicious and Ricky said they’re just call “ears” in Spanish.
The youth meeting lasted 2 ½ hours.
The first part was praise music with musicians, singers, and dancers on a stage which stretched from one side of the theater type space to the other.
I didn’t recognize any of the songs, but they were played well and sung with enthusiasm.
They had scripture reading of the ruler giving various talents to his servants and coming back to see how well they used them.
First it was acted out as though it were in Bible times, then they modernized it with Jesus in a suit and the talents being music, dancing, and soccer.
It was pretty gripping when the dancer did not use his talent for the Lord and he was told he couldn’t come into heaven.
Throughout the drama, they had a number of people talk about the talents God has given them and how they’ve served him with those gifts.
There was a lot of multimedia used throughout the program.
At the end, there was an alter call and 5 young people went forward to receive Christ into their lives.
That was, of course, the best part though the rest was very good.
Today Ricky brought us to Pastor Marco’s church.
Pastor Marco was the Peruvian setup person for Covenant’s first youth mission trip to Peru.
He wasn’t at the church today to see, though.
Again, there was a large, wide stage where the music team led the church in singing.
This time they sang a couple songs in English and the songs were almost all familiar.
They also had a guest speaker, who was an American, speak, so we were able to receive from The Word, too.
He had a lot of good things to say and made a lot of helpful points about our need to have faith.
He also gave an altar call and 5 people responded.
I liked how he said that it wasn’t the pastor’s job to bring people to the Lord but the congregation’s.
So he had everyone ask their neighbor if they knew the Lord and if not, if they’d like to know him.
If they did, the two of them came forward.
Then when others came forward for prayer, he said for them not to expect him to pray for them, but they were to wait on the Holy Spirit to work in their lives.
He did say he received special words from the Lord for specific people he should pray for…a young man between 20-25 who’d been abused at home and someone with diabetes.
Ricky dropped Robert and I off at the grocery store and Robert and I bought some ziti, sauce, sausage and bread for lunch then walked back to Ricky’s house.
We, Ricky, and his nephew Diago enjoyed the pasta and then while Kelsey was washing the dishes, a 12 year old maid, Elsa chatted with Kelsey.
She asked Kelsey what we’d be doing the rest of the day and Kelsey said we’d being going to church.
Kelsey then asked Elsa if she went to church, if she was Catholic, if she knew the Lord…
Elsa said she didn’t go to church, wasn’t catholic and would like to know the Lord. :o).
Kelsey got permission from Ricky’s brother for her to go.
Tonight Ricky will bring us to a service of a pastor, Pastor Moises, who we went and visited last week.
He had a wonderful vision for God working in his neighborhood.
He started with a couple families in his home, grew to 40 people then the Lord showed him better ways to organize and run his church and in 4 years, he now has 400 members of the church with closer to 700 attending.
He has 80 cell groups that meet throughout the neighborhood.
He sees his part of training the leaders for these groups to be very important.
The cell groups meet weekly.
And I believe he said that the entire church meets together every three weeks.
