My first church service

I went to church this morning. Because of the time difference, at exactly the same time I was at church here, my normal church in Sydney was starting its service too.

So- I understood nothing. Well, hardly anything, except for 'Amazing Grace' in Spanish which we sang. I picked up a few ideas, but most of it went completely over my head. It was like 'blah blah blah, word of God, blah blah, suffering, blah blah blah blah blah Jesus something cross, blah blah...' Very discouraging for me. My Spanish must be atrocious. I could pick up most of the ideas in the bible readings, but they read so fast that by the time I figured out the first two verses, they were already up to verse seven. The people were very friendly though. There was no one under 40 years old, and there were only about 20 people there. Apparently if you go to Madrid and Barcelona, the Christian population there is a lot younger and the churches are a lot bigger. I'm not surprised though- Spain is very Catholic, especially in the smaller towns where people tend to be more traditional.

It was a very novel experience. We had communion, and the pastor actually broke up a loaf of bread into four pieces and then you pick a bit off that. And the communion wine was sweet and white. I enjoyed it immensely, especially the singing because there weren't any musical instruments or leaders so everyone just sang together as harmoniously as possible. There's a Presbyterian chruch about twenty minutes walk from me which I think I'll go to next week and if it's the same (and I think it will be because I don't understand anything anyway) I'll just keep coming to this one which is five minutes walk from my flat.