Outreach Group!

Hey Everyone,
Another update in such a short time! I just wanted to write about the experience I had with my outreach group, while it is still fresh in my mind. Yesterday, (Sunday, Feb. 27th) my group, called ¨Llamados¨ (spanish for ´the called ones´) led a service a local church in a neighbouring town, San Juan. Since the beginning of the semester, all of us students have been placed in outreach groups, and are in charge of leading one church service at a church in the surrounding towns. Generally, the groups lead  a part of the service through a time of worship, reading of the bible and sharing a small testimony. It is done in English, while our director translates everything into Spanish. But my group was lucky enough to do our outreach at an English-speaking church! It is so amazing to worship in a group of believers that are all brought together with the same purpose. So the church that we went to has a very small congregation. I was talking to a lady there, and she said that there are 12 regulars. But sometimes their numbers reach up to twenty, especially in summer. The pastor told me that when the church was first started, its main goal was to be a church set up for the tourists that flock Alicante and the surrounding area during the summer months, but out of that came many other people who are mostly of an English background. Most of the people I talked to are British, but there are a few locals who just have a passion for the Lord, and don´t even know English! There is also one person from Africa, Venezuela, Mexico and the Philipines. The church has grown into a non-denominational international church! Bringing our school of 31 students, plus staff, nearly tripled the size of the church.
    We started with worship led by their worship team. This consisted of a recording of a choir and instruments and overheads. So entirely different than what I´m used to, but sooo great! The joy that was in that building during the worship was so incredible. Seeing them dance and sing for joy broke down all of the barriers (ex: cultural and musical) and brought us all together. In those moments where everyone sang and joined in one song of praise for our God... just made me so happy. I think the pastor described that indescribable happiness, when he said ¨My heart is so full with the presence of Go¨, and now that I think of that... it´s so true that only God can really make your heart so happy. He is he only one who puts peace, hope, happiness and complete ´contentness´ in your life. And what God recently revealed to me; THAT is joy. To me, joy is all of those things and having confidence that God is in control and Lord over my life. Singing at church with everyone really showed me again how real God is.
   After singing, and an introduction from the pastor, our group went up and did our thing. We started out by introducing ourselves, then read a verse to lead us into worship. We sang our own songs, which was a completely different style, but still, they sang with us. Then a few of us shared a small testimony of our lives, and a verse to go with it. Our ´theme´of the service was trusting God and the different ways that we have dealt with that. I shared a very quick testimony of what God has done in my life, and that through my struggles (I shared about the insecurities that I have) I have grown to learn to trust in God. It went really well! And through God in me, I wasn´t even nervous for speaking and the words flowed out, and made sense! After that we did a skit... each of us held papers on which the one thing that we struggle with the most was written on. ´Jesus´ beckoned us to come to him, but we walked past and couldn´t let go of our problems. Then one person was able to, and we followed and gave up our problems to God. When that was done, the speaker for this week shared a sermon, and that was the end of the service.
    I had the opportunity to stay for a while after and share in fellowship with the people. We had tea and cake... so English. It was really neat to talk to everyone and get to know these people personally. The whole experience was so great. I really felt a connection to these people, and really enjoyed hearing their stories of how they ended up at this church and just got to know the people a bit more, instead of being there, doing a service and then leaving again. Of course, the fact that they spoke English was huge, but it was really inspiring to go to a church and see God so alive in these people!
Thanks for reading this again, and supporting me through this!
Christi