Sunday we had the opportunity to go to a church about an hour away from Palenque. We pull up and go down some steps to the church where a lot of people are milling around. Now at this point I have no idea what to expect. What was the church service going to be like? Would it be anything like what I had seen on missions trips to the Baja and Yucatan? I´m really nervous and afraid to use my limited spanish. But why? I´ve used it before. At that moment I felt so far out of my comfort zone, little did I know that the Lord would take me even farther out of it a few minutes later and it would be great!
Let me give you a little bit of background about me. I grew up pretty conservatively where people love the Lord but are fairly conservative in worship style. I was pretty sure that what I was about to experience would push everything I knew. We proceed into the church after being asked to go in by our leaders. The church starts to fill up very quickly. you have the locals plus…oh about 50 world racers trying to fit into a small building maybe the size of my parents living room back home, maybe slightly larger but not by much. So you have people sitting in chairs, standing in the aisles, standing in the back, and even standing outside. The worship was absolutely amazing. I felt God so strongly in this place. People were singing with their whole hearts, clapping, dancing, jumping up in down. Praying and laying hands on each other. Just letting the Spirit move through them. Little uncomfortable for me as that is not what I´m used to.
Seth (the founder of AIM) got up and spoke a little bit. that was translated into spanish which was then translated into Chol (a language of that area). It´s something else getting the opportunity to hear three different languages. pretty neat.
After the service there was some sort of celebration going on and they had butchered a cow for lunch. We all sat down to a meal of beef and rice. We didn´t get to spend much more time with the locals there as we were going to spend the afternoon at Agua Azul, a waterfall not far from where we were. I´ll write more about that later.
