Week Eight: Santo Sacramento

So I finally took some pictures of a typical Sunday at church! Enjoy!  Hopefully you can get a better sense of what my new church is like!  Feel free to comment or ask any questions if something is not clear!

This is what the inside of the church looks like. It is pretty small and can probably only hold about 40 people at most.  It is more of a chapel I would say.

Here is one of a few piano players who play the music for the service.  Santo Sacramento does not have a choir or any other music programs. 

Here is Pastor Angel preforming the service.  The service is similar to any Lutheran service in the US.  The liturgy is word for word similar to what we use in at my home church (except it is in Spanish haha).  The only thing that is different is the music (they do not use the LBW or WOV here).  The music is from a small book that looks like someone in the congregation printed out.  I do not recognize any of the songs we have sang so far but I like them!  

Congregation worshiping (the family in the middle is my country coordinator and her family (L to R: David, Emily, Matt, and Kate).

Reading of the Gospel.

Blessing the bread for communion. 

Sharing the Peace.

Communion

Communion

Communion

After church activities with the kids.  Most of the kids do not attend church but come for the after church lunch and program for youth.  Most of the children live in a nearby poor neighborhood.  From what I hear, life is/can be difficult there.  The children that come to the church program are not any of the same children that I spend time with at MAMA during the week but come from the same type of living situation.

Some of the boys I usually play soccer with on Sunday afternoons.

Lunch enjoyed on the patio in the beautiful sunlight on a wonderful spring day!  Typically the meals consist of homemade pizza and tang juice to drink.  I usually help prepare the food the day before.  It is a all you can eat type of meal.  It might even be the only meal some of these kids get to eat for the day.  Today we got to have hamburgers!  Then at 3pm before they all leave to go home they get some kind of desert.  Today we had flan (custard-type desert). 

Some girls playing on the swings.

 

The Sunday schedule goes a little like this:

 

1. Church starts around 11am.  Typical 10-30 people attend.  The congregation has about 200 members but only a few families/people come regularly. 

 

2. During the service the children leave and have Sunday school until communion where everyone comes together and takes communion (or if they are too young get blessed).

3. After (around 12:30) church more children come and we all play (soccer, cards, board games, crafts) until lunch is ready.

4. Lunch is typically ready at 1:30.  All the kids come together and we sing a prayer and eat.

5. After lunch there are more focused activities planned for the kids.  They can choose to do whichever one they want.  They can choose from learning the guitar, learning to cross stitch, playing soccer, and sometimes arts and crafts.  So far I have been the soccer person.  

6.  At 3pm the after church program is over and the kids get their desert before they set off for home.  

This program was set up so that these kids would have a place to go on Sundays.  It helps get them off the dangerous streets that they might be living on or near.  They get something to eat and they get to (I hope) know that someone cares about them.  They also get to learn that we should respect others and treat them with kindness.  These are just a few main goals among many others that I think the members of the church that set this program up want to try and reach.  This after church program is also some what new (around a year old) so they/we are still trying to figure out what is best.