Day 25 (6/26/11)

Today we had church, we put up the basketball nets in the Urbi park, and we ate some freshly cooked Mexican chicken from a local tienda.
For today’s church service we returned to singing with a recording for the worship time. I feel like I’m starting to memorize some of the words to the songs which is nice. I can also understand most of what each song means so I can worship God in a different language now which is really cool. The thing that is neat to realize is that God can understand me no matter what language I speak in. One of the songs we sang today had some really fast parts to it where you had to speak quickly to say the lyrics. I was able to get most of the lyrics out quick enough, but I still need to work on how quickly I can speak.
Following worship we had our normal Bible study time, but this time the lesson was led by one of the more elderly men in the church. In his talk he and his wife challenged the rest of the church members to be more active in their walk with Christ. I wasn’t able to understand all of what they said, but one part that stuck out to me the most was when the wife said “This isn’t a social club” and “We’re in a war. We are soldiers and a family”. She was quite emphatic as she said these things, and I think the rest of the church members felt what she said. I agree with her on this point and feel that most Americans (and Christians in general) need to be reminded of this fact that we’re not just a social club to come hang out at. Anyway, that was the best part about church today.
After church was over us interns and a few other guys played a game or two of basketball on the nearby court. Before we played a game we had to put up the nets on the goals though because there aren’t any on the courts here. Once that was done we played our games and then packed up the tent we use for the worship place. After all this was done it started raining all of a sudden and so we hurried back to Lina’s house. For lunch Lina wanted to get chicken so Luigi, Andrew, and I walked back to the far road which has some local tiendas on it.
This chicken is cooked “al carbon” which means it’s cooked on a grill with wood underneath (or at least I think that’s what it means). We bought the chicken and a few other things for our meal here and headed back to the casa. By this time though the rain had picked up heavily and was really pouring down so we decided to take a taxi. I paid for the taxi and we went inside to enjoy our meal. I really liked the chicken and hope to eat more of it soon. Apparently they only make it every Saturday and Sunday though. Following this not much else happened except for us watching a movie in Spanish and I called both of my parents. Soon I’ll be starting my 20th day here in Mexico. How crazy I’ve been here that long already!