A church without walls

One of the highlights of this past week was getting to worship in Pastor Edman's church in Tuxtla.  (Pastor Edman is the person who picked us up from the airport.)   The journey to church was a bit of adventure in itself - we went with our friend Pastor Gloria and her friend Deirdre, first by taxi to the bus station and then by bus for about an hour, around and down the mountain, and then by taxi again (yes 7 of us in a taxi plus the diriver!) to the church.

The church itself is in a clearing tucked away in the city with several large trees.  One of the trees is a mango tree, and a ripe mango almost fell on Peter's head!   The church has been around for almost 15 years and has a few small independent class rooms with two walls and a ceiling, and the main sanctuary, also two walls and a ceiling.  Tuxtla is quite hot, so it was lovely to feel the breeze throughout the service.

The worship service began with reading Psalm 100, and when I (Elizabeth) heard those familiar words, something in me felt at home, more at home than I have felt here yet or since.  We continue to be impressed by the amount of participation in worship services here - different people lead all the different parts of the liturgy and everyone reads the scripture readings together out loud.  We also continue to be impressed by the len

gth of the services!  Though this week, I was partly to blame - a slightly less than 20 minute sermon in English becomes about a 40 minute sermon with translation!  It was a very exciting privilege to get to preach and a new experience workng with a translator - the sermon was very much a joint effort! And the congregation was very patient . . . after the service we traveled to a small community outside of Tuxtla to pariticpate in a graduation celebration - lots of traditional food and a traditional mirimba band playing.

We continue to persevere with our language classes, sometimes frustrated by how slowly we are learning.  Peter is speaking spanglish and seems to understand more than the rest of us, but bit by bit we are understanding more.  We continue to explore the city and some of the parks nearby.  The girls joined an art class at a nearby art cooperative, and Jay and the kids visited a park near the city called Rancho Nuevo, with giant slides, a cave to explore and horseback riding.  Peter was thrilled by his first horseback ride and keeps saying 'Again! Again!' whenever we talk about it.

I aslked the girls if there was anything they would like me to include in this week's blog, and they said 'Amigos!'  We are very blessed to have a family from London also studying at the language school with children close to ours in age and we've done several playdates with them already.  Emma is eagerly aniticpating celebrating her birthday here in Mexico next week with a piñata.

We are so thankful for this time in this very different and very beautiful place and we miss you all.  You continue to be in our thoughts and prayers and we are deeply grateful for your prayers for us.