Church

This one is fairly long and doesn’t have any pictures because it has more to do with daily life and adjusting to a new place and lifestyle than with going someplace extraordinary. However, I hope you enjoy it.


When we came to Denia, Maria Elena (that’s the name our professor uses when she lives here) told us that we should try to get as involved as possible in community activities. The church I am going to, which is actually a Baptist church, does social assistance work in the city, and this past Tuesday I went to help out. All of the ladies helping were between 40 and 70, but they are all really nice. The only lady whose name I actually learned is Rosario. She’s from Peru, and her late husband owned a yacht company that did mini cruises in various parts of the world, so she has been all over the Western coast of the US, Hawaii, all over the European coast, and finally has settled in Denia to retire. They told me I should come back earlier next week so that I can have coffee with them and chat before we get to work. Most of the people who came in to pick up clothes and food were Muslim women and children. They appear to be of Middle Eastern descent, but they speak Spanish like native speakers with the Denia accent, so I don’t think they are first-generation immigrants. Anyway, it was a very strange experience being in a church handing out clothing to people who were obviously of a different faith with no expressed interest in the church at all.


On Thursday evenings, the church has a mid-week gathering for a time of praise, fellowship, and small group study. It is held in their old building downtown, so it’s really easy to get to. Chani (a friend of mine from Calvin) and I went together just to check it out. When we walked in, we didn’t know where to go, so we sat behind a group of students. They didn’t look very Spanish to me, but we greeted them in Spanish, and they responded in Spanish. The girl who did most of the talking was Miriam. Most of them are from Germany (two are from Texas) and are volunteering at the Alpha and Omega school which our church runs. They are all post-high school and pre-university students. There is a group of about twenty students at any given time. They come for anywhere from two months to a year and they come and leave individually so there is always someone in the group who speaks good Spanish and a few who barely speak it. Hopefully, we will get to know them better over the next few months.


After Chani and I talked to them for a while, the singing started. I didn’t know any of the songs, but it was all praise music (complete with overhead projection ). One of the songs we sang talked about bringing praises before God’s throne, and while we were singing, I nearly burst into tears. It is so powerful to see the unity of the church when it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. There were people there from Peru, Central America, Germany, Texas, Michigan, various parts of Africa, and Denia all praising God together, and a good portion of them were speaking a second or third or fourth language or a very different dialect of their first language. Think about what the Church, the universal Church, must be like. C.S. Lewis has a piece in The Screwtape Letters about how the devil wants Christians to focus on the brokenness and annoyances of their own tiny body of believers that gathers in a building every week. He says that as long as the devil can keep us focused on that, we will not be able to see the Church: universal, sanctified, powerful, and Spirit-filled, working through the power of Jesus to build the kingdom of God. I was so blessed this past week to catch a tiny glimpse of that Church in a small stone building in downtown Denia.


After we finished singing, we went to small groups. Since Chani and I weren’t already in one, we got put into a group of high school girls. The leader is Anna, and Alicia helps her. Then there is Rebecca, Juliana, Andrea, Beti, Sara, Sara, Diana and Noelia, all between the ages of fifteen and seventeen. Alicia is in her mid-twenties and just finished her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry. (As an aside: We had a fun two-minute conversation comparing curriculum and enjoying the looks of horror on the high school girls’ faces while we listed off the many different types of chemistry we have either taken or will take.)


The church is doing a series on love, so that’s what the small groups are focusing on too. When we did the part about speaking in the tongues of angels but not having love, the leader used Chani and me as an example: even if these girls could speak perfect Spanish and explain everything in the world to us in Spanish, if they did it without love, it would mean nothing. We all laughed, but in a way, it was a good reminder too. Sometimes, we get really focused on speaking here.


Later, I was walking home, and I realized that I hadn’t felt this happy since actually coming to Denia, and I realized that for the very first time, I had felt included in a place. It’s not like I’m indispensable – I could leave and not come back and very few people would even notice – it’s more that I felt surrounded. I know the names and faces of fifteen different people there! That more than tripled my circle of people from Spain that I know. I also realized that if this is what the church is like in all parts of the world, I could move anywhere as long as there is a church there. I can also understand why people start attending church in the first place. Even if you don’t know that you need God, it’s pretty easy to know that you need other people, and the church can fill that need in a way that very few other institutions can, especially if you don’t have a healthy or socially fulfilling family situation. One last thing: I’ve also been realizing that when I get back home, it’s not going to work for me to go to an all-white church anymore. The whole diversity thing is getting to me, and I have barely been here two weeks.