On the first Thursday evening of every month, ICC holds a special, celebratory communion service. The term for observing the sacrament of communion in Spanish is Santa Cena, or literally “holy supper”. Santa Cena is one of our favorite things to celebrate at ICC, and we always try to make the service extra special and meaningful. Well, last night was no exception. Pastor Jose Figueroa and church elder Cecilia de la Cruz planned an extended time of worship with our music director Edel, to be followed by a reflection on the concept of repentance from Cecilia.
However, when we arrived a few hours before the service to get everything ready, we discovered that our generator, which we must use for every church service in order to have sufficient electricity and to ensure that we don’t experience blackouts if the electric company decides to randomly cut the power from the street, was not working. A few critical belts had broken and could not be purchased until the next morning. So, the musicians and sound technician began moving everything from our auditorium to the patio space that is typically used as our Abriendo Camino School’s playground. To make things more challenging, the sky was cloudy, and we expected that it wouldn’t be long before it might rain.
But, the team decided to press on, and they prayed that God would hold back the rain until after the service. And, He did! We squeezed over 100 people into the patio, with most of our young people sitting behind the musicians on the stairs leading up to the 2nd floor of Abriendo Camino, and the rest in every remaining space. Even though it was a bit stuffy and cramped, it was amazing to see our ICC family worshipping God together in such close quarters. Sometimes extraordinary physical proximity forces us to get more “real” with each other, and thereby become more vulnerable and open to what God wants to do in our lives. We believe that God doesn’t allow anything to happen by accident; and although we don’t always rejoice in the stress of quite so many last minute changes and perceived inconveniences, that is when we really see Him at work.
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