Santa's here?! I know him!
I could have said the same thing as Will Ferrell in Elf yesterday!
St. Michael Lutheran Church in Ft. Myers, FL, has been fostering relationships in greater Santiago for the past 21 years. Their contacts were integral in the establishment of Concordia Lutheran School in Palmar Arriba, in eventually in planting a church alongside it, and now in seeking to establish a new preaching station in Moca, a community of 60,000 about 20 minutes southeast of Licey, where my church, Cordero de Dios, is located. (THIS THURSDAY is the first service of the Word in Villa Dura, a community about halfway to Moca!)
St. Michael faithfully sends representatives to the DRLM's twice-yearly FORO partnership meetings but makes regular, unrelated visits as well...like every first weekend in December. Yesterday, I was asked to interpret the sermon for a small St. Michael contingent that attended Cordero de Dios. It was the first time I had used the simultaneous interpretation system we purchased for last year's Symposium. Thanks be to God that there were no technological malfunctions!
I had the Spanish sermon text in advance, so I took the liberty of translating it, printing it, and essentially reading from an English transcript while following along. The text was Luke 21:25-36, a discourse on signs of the end of the age. Pastor Yban talked about how drivers often ignore road signs due to the many distractions around them. He compared the frenzied holiday consumerism that characterizes this time of year to said distractions. We the Church, however, gather around Word and Sacrament - "signs" that Jesus has come and will come again soon - while we watch and wait.
St. Michael Lutheran Church in Ft. Myers, FL, has been fostering relationships in greater Santiago for the past 21 years. Their contacts were integral in the establishment of Concordia Lutheran School in Palmar Arriba, in eventually in planting a church alongside it, and now in seeking to establish a new preaching station in Moca, a community of 60,000 about 20 minutes southeast of Licey, where my church, Cordero de Dios, is located. (THIS THURSDAY is the first service of the Word in Villa Dura, a community about halfway to Moca!)
St. Michael faithfully sends representatives to the DRLM's twice-yearly FORO partnership meetings but makes regular, unrelated visits as well...like every first weekend in December. Yesterday, I was asked to interpret the sermon for a small St. Michael contingent that attended Cordero de Dios. It was the first time I had used the simultaneous interpretation system we purchased for last year's Symposium. Thanks be to God that there were no technological malfunctions!
I had the Spanish sermon text in advance, so I took the liberty of translating it, printing it, and essentially reading from an English transcript while following along. The text was Luke 21:25-36, a discourse on signs of the end of the age. Pastor Yban talked about how drivers often ignore road signs due to the many distractions around them. He compared the frenzied holiday consumerism that characterizes this time of year to said distractions. We the Church, however, gather around Word and Sacrament - "signs" that Jesus has come and will come again soon - while we watch and wait.
Last night, Larry & Pat, a couple from St. Michael, played Santa and Mrs. Claus at the Ayuntamiento (City Hall) light display, complete with gifts for each child and lollipops for when the gifts ran out. Their pastor recognized the incongruity of this with what we'd just heard in the sermon but eloquently explained that the tradition of gift giving can shed light on the true message of Christmas: we don't deserve and didn't earn God's love, yet He sent His very Son in the form of a babe for our salvation.
I wasn't going to go but wound up swinging by since I was out and about anyway, and it was practically on my way home.
I was VERY glad I'd been forewarned to be there at 5:30. There were only a handful of other cars in the parking lot when I pulled in, but this was the scene when I left!
Until next time, blessings!
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