Jubilee

Sunday morning I went to church with my homestay. It was called the Jubilee Christian Church- Ebenezer Ministries, whatever that means. Apparently it was some kind of evangelical denomination. The service lasted 3 1-2 hours! They opened with a song, complete with a band, trumpets, and nine girls dancing- don´t worry their heads were covered. The second song was 50 minutes long (literally... there was a clock in the church). The dancers traded their head scarved for tamborines with long ribbons and the women in the audience started waving their scarves around their heads (think lasso style). I was so tired of standing and clapping, I don´t know how those girls danced for that long without a break. Although afterwards someone brought them napkins to wipe off the sweat.It was incredibly difficult to hear over the drums and trumpets but they had a 3 minute chorus of ¨A Jehova¨and several long choruses of ¨Libertad¨. The 3rd song was called On the Wings of a Dove, and by the end most of the people were crying, and it ended with everyone making up their own version of the song. Anyways after 2 hours of standing, singing, and clapping we got to sit for the hour and a half sermon. We had a special guest speaker from Cuba who surprisingly had an understandable accent. It was very interesting, and although there were definitely things I didn´t agree with (in the sermon, I recognize that different cultures need to be able to express their faith in their own ways and our church would not make it down here) I liked that it was completely run by Guatemaltecos. In conclusion, I´m really glad I went, but would like to find a different church before next Sunday.