CHURCH

On Sunday our friends Gus and Carol MacDonald invited us to go to church with them.  It is a non-denominational, bilingual church called Calvary Chapel Jaco.  

Calvary Chapel Jaco

This is unique for two reasons.  First, a church that is bilingual is very hard to find.  Secondly, it is hard to find a non-denominational church because the vast majority of residents here are Catholic. There are quite a number of very nice catholic churches here.  This is one just around the corner from our condo complex.  

Catholic Church

The Calvary Chapel congregation meets in some donated office space belonging to the local movie theater.  There are generally about twenty five to thirty people in attendance although the church was planted here about five years ago.  I believe this limited growth is a direct result of the high percentage of Catholics living in Jaco.   
The service consisted of singing a lot of songs in both English and Spanish.  The words were projected on a screen but Gail and I don't speak Spanish that well so we sang along as best we could.  As the Bible says "make a joyful noise" and that is about all we were doing.
The pastor is a young man from Florida with a wife and four young children.  Before he begins the service he makes some remarks to the congregation about things in general in the church.  There is a local gentleman sitting up front also who immediately translates everything into Spanish.

Translator

After these remarks, there is a potluck meal served .  Everyone brings food and places it at the front of the church.   All of the congregation then goes to the front of the church and fills their plates with food.  They eat while the preacher preaches and even go up and get seconds if they want while the preacher continues to preach.

Preaching and eating

The sermon consists of the preacher saying something in English and then the local gentleman translating that into Spanish.  So a thirty minute sermon turns into an hour.  Plus, I figured out that the preacher has time to think while his remarks are being translated so he thinks of more to say.  His thirty minute prepared sermon turns into forty minutes which then turns into an hour and twenty minutes.   Services are supposed to start at 9:30, but they rarely do, and usually last about three hours.

Preaching, eating, translating

I found it very difficult to stay focused since there was always a pause after a couple sentences while the translation was being done.

Last Sunday was special in that two ladies were baptized.  After the service was over, the congregation moved out to the beach.  

The ladies were baptized in the surf.  

You may notice the lady starts with a dress on and finishes with jeans on; and starts with hair combed down and ends with it in a pony tail.  That could be explained by either:
two different ladies or, the power of the cleansing process.