La Iglesia ~ The Church

We went to church for the first time today and it was very different, but a great experience. I knew that there would be a few differences because La Iglesia Fuente de Vida (The Church Source of Life) is an Evangelical church and I have never been to that type of church before (and I’m kind of in Costa Rica, too, so I figured that may make it a little different…language barrier, traditions, and stuff like that you know).  I honestly don’t even know how to describe the passion that filled the little church we were in. The only service of the day was at 9am and began with a long prayer thanking God for all of the blessings he has given us. There was usually music playing in the background during prayers throughout the service, too. In between parts of the prayer, we sang some songs, which I really enjoyed because the words were on a screen and lit up like at karaoke, so I knew what to do and understood everything! J The pictures they showed on the screen during that time were incredible. There was this one of Jesus holding out his hands to the world with a lot of little people—gave me Goosebumps! People were literally jumping up and down and clapping, shouting and cheering for Jesus. I had never seen anything like it before; it was extremely moving. When I think of church it’s usually a pretty strict, quiet setting. This was like a combination of a bible study and church service in a way.

After the prayers and singing were done, the pastor came up and did a greeting. He had all the people with birthdays in the end of January and beginning of February come up front, so naturally I sunk down a little bit in my chair until I was told to go up front. It was pretty special because he said a prayer/blessing for all of the people. For the offering, two adults and a little girl stood up front. The adults had treasure chests and the little girl had a basket. Everyone went up at once and the children put their offerings in the little girl’s basket, while everyone else brought their offering to the treasure chests. I thought that was pretty cool, and definitely different than what my church does. Afterwards, the Sunday school teacher came up with the children that were 6 or under (they start kindergarten at 7 here) and they showed the video below and sang the song with actions (absolutely adorable)! It was time for them to go to Sunday school and the pastor to do the sermon, which was a little difficult to follow for me, but I still think I got a lot out of it.

For communion, everyone went up to the front of the church and stood around a table that had the bread and wine, which was then passed out. The bread was not unleavened and I think the wine was grape juice, so that was a little different. When the children got back, the pastor had everyone come up who is going to be in school starting tomorrow (the beginning of their school year), so Sarah and I were summoned of course. The prayer was very personal and special, though. When everyone sat down, the pastor said a long prayer to end the service. People began by sitting, some stood up, some kneeled down, and many ended up going to the front of the church. There were so many tears and so much love and emotion in the room, I can’t even describe it. The people in that congregation have so much love for each other and passion about life and God. A large portion of the service was prayer, but you could tell they were truly coming from the heart of whomever was speaking. It was really refreshing, but got to be a little long because the service didn’t end until a little after noon.