Church and Iglesia

We went to two churches this morning. First we celebrated Palm Sunday at our "home" church, International Christian Fellowship, which is an English speaking church made up of missionaries, embassy workers and other English speakers. This church is in the midst of a pastor search, so we get to hear a different member of the body speak each week. This week it was David Bustamante, a Chilean, who moved to the US several years ago (the Bothell/Woodinville area, funny enough!), and then became a missionary to Nicaragua with his wife Shara. He joked about giving his message in Spanish and letting Halle translate for him.

We then went into Managua to go to church at Iglesia Verbo (living word church)... WOW! The worship music was amazing. The band was large and LOUD (two guitars, bass, drum set, congas, two keyboards, and 5 singers) and incredibly tight and well rehearsed. You would have loved it, Tracy Stipek. No one had music, just a song list of what songs they'd be doing that morning. My spanish was good enough, that with the help of seeing the words on the screen, I was actually able to feel like I was worshipping while singing, not just stumbling along not sure of what I was saying. The sermon, on the other hand... I couldn't keep up with that. I caught bits and pieces here and there, but felt pretty lost most of the time due to the rapid delivery. I was able to catch most of the "wrap-up" that he did at the end of his sermon, so I feel like I got the gist of it. It might have helped if he was preaching about palm sunday, but no.

I couldn't fit the whole band in the shot. If you look closely, you can read the words to the bridge of "Mighty to Save," but they're in spanish, of course. (English is: Jesus, shine your light and let the whole world see, we're singing, for the glory of the risen King)

Drew was pretty excited about the music.