Bienvenido!

Ok so this morning Jay and I experienced something really cool. Just to give you a little background, Jay's title "Associate AMD" is a huge umbrella and he has many different hats that he wears so to speak. He has recently been given more responsibility and was given the "ethnic and multi-housing church planting" for Northwest Mississippi. So he has been meeting with a hispanic church planting pastor and today we decided to go visit his church since we didn't have the kids with us. The church is quickly growing and there were about 30-40 there this morning. It was quite interesting because the whole service was in Spanish! We knew that it would be but just wanted to go and worship with them. The pastor (Gus) was very considerate and did translate every now and then in the sermon just to give us an idea of what he was talking about. I admired several things about this service. First of all, all of the children were in the service and all were well behaved! I guess they have been trained from day one and were all used to it. In fact, the pastor called out his own son in the middle of the sermon and told him to go sit next to his mama. WOW! We should see more of that I think! It was very laid back and everyone seemed to feel so comfortable and free to worship. There were people in the audience that brought their own musical instruments and just broke them out in the middle of song! We didn't feel out of place at all, in fact out of about 30-40, we probably had at least 20 come and greet us individually and introduce themselves and to say "Bienvenido!" or "Welcome!" We didn't understand most of what was said, but it was very enjoyable and we learned alot from our visit. We believe that God was glorified in that room and that is what is most important. After all, are we not all "one in Christ?" Although it was not in our language, we were all part of the "body" so we felt unified in that place. Has God taken you out of your comfort zone recently to experience Him? Who says you have to go to another country? Allow the Lord to use you just around the corner to a community that needs the Lord! As the children's song says: "...red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight..."