This is the day the Lord has made; let us us rejoice and be glad in it! Today’s schedule was a full one and I can’t help how more difficult it would have been were it not for Mike’s graciousness. To remind you, his house is about 15 kilometers, or 10 miles from downtown San José. Traffic limits speed to an average of about 20 mph, so you can imagine what a trip into town means for someone. We got up, got ready and Mike drove us into downtown San José and dropped us off at the Clínica Bíblica Hospital, the major downtown hospital, which just happens to have been founded by the original Strachan’s in the 1920’s (more on tomorrow’s blog). He then went home, cooked breakfast for Jonathan and four of his friends who stayed the night, got cleaned up and made it back into town for his own church (where we were last Sunday) by 10:00 - He’s crazy!!!!!
We waited curbside for about 5 minutes and then were picked up by Verna Brenamen and Esthela Corvallos, two single gals who have worked here with LAM for over 45 years, primarily with the Clínica Bíblica. They took us on a 30-minute drive on a hot morning to the church they help to start 30 years ago, Templo Bíblico Peniel in a suburb of San José, las Pavas. As we drove up to the church, we were taken back by the evident poverty and the piles of uncollected garbage lining the streets of the church’s neighborhood. The girls pointed out where the old church building was and then parked in front of the “new church”, a combo concrete and corrugated aluminum structure, badly in the need of painting. We could hear the worship team practicing from the street, and I even recognized a couple of them. We waked up a set of stairs from the street to a relatively small sanctuary with a small stage in front, ceiling and window fans everywhere. We were warmly greeted by the Nicaraguan pastor(s), who take all of their cues from Vera and Esthela (who are both in their mid-late seventies). Although church was supposed to start, there were but a few women and young people in the church. But like every church I’ve been in and even pastored, by 10 minutes into the service the place was relatively full and diverse.
Worship lasted almost an hour and it was interesting. The worship team consisted of a drummer, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, and two singers. One was actually quite good, while her teammate was, well let’s just say she struggled to find the pitch. The worship was lively and, yet, hard for us to enter into because they had no way for us to follow along - no screens, no powerpoint, no nothing. How can these people survive?!?!??!
After about 45 minutes, the worship team sat down and one of the pastors invited Esthela to come up and help us to continue to worship. She pulled out what looked like a flannel graph book (oversized) from the sixties and shared the Palm Sunday story very quickly using the pictures. Then she passed out a sheet of paper that had several hymns on it and proceeded to lead us in all five verses of every hymn on the sheet a capella! It’s not my cup of tea, but boy the people sang!!!
After an offering and prayer, the pastor turned it over to me and I preached for the 40 minutes they had asked for. You know how hard that was for me… After I closed in prayer, they paraded the little kids first, followed by the youth group, onto the platform and they shared the verse they had learned for the day. A song and a prayer later the service was over. Most of the church came up and hugged us and then filed out rather quickly to head to their homes. We had to wait a bit for Esthela to finish up, but within 10 minutes we were off to a nice restaurant in their area for a “langosta” (small lobster) feast. At lunch we heard about the many years Esthela and Verna have served with the LAM and about their upcoming two-month whirlwind furlough around the U.S. After lunch we traveled with them back to their apartment, which they have been renting for 35 years for tea, apple cobbler, pictures of the last thirty years and more history. I cannot re-emphasize enough the extent of both commitment and sacrifice that our long-term missionaries have given to the Lord and to LAM.
Around 1:30, Mike and his son Jonathan came by to pick us up and take us back to their home to get some much needed rest before getting ready to preach again at Escazú Christian Fellowship on the far opposite side of town. We arrived hot and tired at about 2:00, expecting to get a couple of hours of downtime. What we didn’t know at that time was that the main freeway from downtown San José to Escazú was closed for paving, which would mean that we would have to take a much longer ‘round about way to get to church. At 2:45, about the time I was finally dozing off, Mike shouted in from the front door that we only had about fifteen minutes to get ready. We would have to leave around 3:00 to drive into town to meet the Rice’s who would then take us to Escazú (their church).
We met the Rice’s at 3:15, and they took the long way around which still got us to the church at about 4:00, one full hour before service was to start. We took advantage of the time to meet the pastor, a presbyterian in his third year as pastor of the interdenominational Escazú Christian Fellowship. We listened as the Worship Team rehearsed mostly songs and hymns we knew or guessed were very presbyterian. They were are acoustic and quite appropriate for the service.
As the service was beginning we were greeted by Suzanne Emory, Matt and Lisa Befus and the Sabeans, all LAMers we had spent time with this past week. In order to adapt to the 25-minute framework for the message I consolidated a lot from the am message and it was a tad bit easier to preach in English (though not a whole lot so). We participated after the message in the Lord’s Supper by intinction (look it up!), and I was asked to give the benediction and then walked out in true liturgical style with the Pastor (Stacey). We had to wait quite a while for Shelley Rice to finish up with all her duties and communications and then we were off to dinner together.
A short drive and we arrived at RostiPollo, a Costa Rican answer to Boston Market. We had great charbroiled chicken with all the trimmings and enjoyed more conversation with Craig and Shelley. By the time we had eaten the last bite, I was already fading, and the Rice’s could see it. So we hurried off to the downtown bus station where we caught a taxi back to Mike’s. We had a brief conversation with Mike, who was heading up north with his pastor the next morning, packed most of our nags in order to head for the Bougainvillea tomorrow morning, talked with Stefi, and then fell asleep pretty quickly.
Another long, hot, wonderful day in the Lord was added to our memories…
No comments:
Post a Comment