Day 5 – Third Verse, Same As The First…

With the big pour behind us, today we focused on continued progress for the various projects we have going on. In addition to continuing the irrigation work, the youth spread out and got engaged in several of the ongoing construction efforts, helping with welding, grinding, painting, and carpentry.

The big event today, though, followed dinner, when we all piled into the vans and headed downtown. En Espiritu & En Verdad (In Spirit & In Truth) is a group that is very popular and plays Spanish versions of many well-known worship songs. Rather than a “concert,” the event was more a mega-service, kicking off with a long worship set (including delirious?, Chris Tomlin, and David Crowder favorites), then a REALLY long message in Spanish about being a light in the darkness and focusing on the commonalites among Christians and not letting differences of opinion separate us from each other, then another shorter worship set, ending with an amazing version of “Our God.”

Despite the fact that the gym we were in was boiling hot, and we were in there sitting on bleachers for 3.5 hours, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It was great to experience the familiar and the foreign simultaneously; a practical example of how Jesus is consistent everywhere, yet knows us in every language and always meets us right where we are at.

We returned to Dulce Refugio at about 10:30. The girls hung out or went to bed, but most of the guys decided that it was a good time to walk down to a nearby taco stand for a snack. What was supposed to be a two-block stroll turned out to be a marathon adventure, but they were rewarded with what was reportedly the “best tacos of the trip” from a little taco cart down the street (the marathon took them on a big loop and they ended up just a few blocks from the orphanage).

Our bodies are aching and sinuses are rebelling against the dry, dusty environment, but our spirits are great! We are getting to know the kids by name, and they are loving the attention!