last service of this trip at church of the nazarene philadelphia. (warning: the next couple of posts are going to be about last times and goodbyes). i had attended 2 services before this one after my initial post about this church. last week, i had met maha, she was raised catholic but felt that what she experienced during mass had been just ritualistic movements and no really substance. she has been attending church of the nazarene for 2 years now. she says she feels like, “these are the real christians.” the church may be small but there is definitely a lot of passion and love. at this last service, we were joined by a church from mafraq, a city on the border of syria. the church of nazarene supplied an electric keyboard and the mafraq church brought a drum and oud. i wasn’t a huge fan of the instrumentals, but it was/has been interesting observing (at all church services), the types of music that are sung. for one, i am familiar with none of them, except for when we sang “how great thou are,” in arabic. in the states, there is such a thing as contemporary christian music. these are the sorts of songs that i am used to hearing on christian radio, at church, ect. maybe there is such a thing as “contemporary christian music” here but it doesn’t sound anything like the music at home. i guess it’s taken song getting used to. it’s interesting to see the different sorts of melodies different cultures compose for worship. after attending this last church service, i can say (though i can’t really say how much) that my arabic has improved. before, i had only been able to pick out single words from the sermon but at this service, i found myself being able to understanding phrases (i may have been able to do this before, but i feel like the quantity of phrases i can understand now has increased). this made me so happy. it’s usually hard to gage your own progress, but when you are able to witness it, you feel pretty good. i’m thinking of attending arabic church services when i return home – i think my attendance at church of nazarene was a good decision – socially, spiritually, and in terms of my arabic studies. while i have been able to understand phrases, i could still not get the gist of the message, so after the service, i asked maha about it. here’s what i got from her… you can know as much about the bible as you want, you can attend church, pray every day, give money, but if you don’t apply what you know about the bible to be true to your life, it doesn’t mean much. don’t live as two people – the person you are at church and the person you are the rest of the time. maha and i exchanged contact info, so i hope to keep in touch with her. oh, at the end of the sermon, the pastors’ wives went around and handed out gifts to the ladies of our congregation and the congregation from mafraq. men didn’t get anything… the gesture was super cute, though. later, a woman asked if she could trade with me because she already had red nail polish at home but not blue. mind you, this woman was married and had kids. lol, i thought it was cute of her to want to trade.
my little beauty pack, complete with lipstick, lip gloss, nail polish, and a jesus loves you this i know sticker.
goodbye church. until next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment