Sunday, February 26th

A day for worship! Today we attended 3 different church services. Starting at 6:45 this morning, we hurried to Pastor Carlos’ church. Pastor Carlos is the pastor of the main church in downtown Barquisimeto. He plants daughter churches all over the city and has also planted 2 in Caracas. He is a very faithful servant to the Lord! Pastor Carlos called us YESTERDAY to ask if one of us would like to preach. Dillon, with only a short time to reflect, felt God’s calling to share His message. With John as a translator Dillon shared from Nehemiah 6 including the verse: “I am carrying on a great work and cannot go down [from this wall]” with all present. After Dillon finished preaching Pastor Carlos reinforced his powerful words. Samuel later shared with us that at the beginning of this year Pastor Carlos felt that God was calling them to finish the project that they had started in the main church, instead of starting another smaller daughter church. The congregation felt that Dillon’s message today confirmed the plan that the Lord has for them and gave them encouragement to finish it this year.

We enjoyed a breakfast of empanadas y café served to us by the women at Carlos’ church following the service. After eating, we headed to Pastor Alexander’s Church. We felt a great personal connection with this church. Not only did we join in singing and dancing, we also witnessed people coming to the front of the church to accept Jesus into their lives or rededicate their lives to Christ. This was an extremely powerful and emotional moment for each of us. After congregating with the members of the church, we headed to lunch, but not before we found Steve on the floor playing with the kids.

Lunch was actually very good. To sum it up, it was family style smoked meat, yucca and coleslaw. Jessica enjoyed cachapas, which are the equivalent to a corn bread pancake, seeing as she was not a big fan of the meat options. Kevin on the other hand consumed a good amount of meat that seemed somewhat questionable to all others. We made it back to the seminary and some took siestas while others relaxed or went grocery shopping. During this time of relaxation, Nigel, an Irish missionary that the team worked with last year, stopped by with his wife, daughter and friends to say hello. We very much look forward to working with Nigel and his outreach in the smaller villages. Our discussion with Nigel made us even more aware of the fact that we are not only here for the physical labor of building a church but also to build relationships and share the gospel with the people of Venezuela.

Our last worship service took place at Franklin’s church. We entered to a congregation of around 40 people. The church itself had no rook, giving us the opportunity to feel a nice breeze, which Stacy elegantly described as “God’s breath.” It was a simply yet beautiful setting. We concluded the evening with delicious pizza and a daily devotional led by John, in which he discussed the importance of forgiveness, pulling from 1 Corinthians 13:5 and Colossians 3:13. John described forgiveness as “deleting any wrongs from the hard drive of your heart.”