Jul
03
Last night we opened our home for a short prayer meeting. I expected to have 3 or 4 people. Instead I had 20 and was scrambling to make space for the chairs (luckily between ours and the ones Kyle gave us when he moved, we now have 18 dining room chairs!). I think it turned out really well for a number of reasons. One of our main goals was to make sure it was worth coming back to, as we intend to repeat the meeting every Wednesday night. With that in mind, we insisted that people pray very short prayers (one sentence) at a time so that it didn't turn out long and boring. We also insisted on starting at 7 (Peruvian time: 7:30) and ending at 8 (exactly, American time).I think some of those boundaries made a difference for people who aren't used to being around "religious folks." I was happy to see that there were quite a few in that category. A good chunk of our Alpha group came (and stayed to chat when everyone else had gone) and also Don F! I gave him an invitation yesterday but was still pleasantly shocked when he was the first one in the door. The town social worker, who helps us with our charity cases but is openly not interested in our spiritual teaching, showed up as well. It's my prayer that some of the new folks will have a chance to experience both Christian Community and God through these meetings. We'll see.
Wow! Han, this is awesome to hear! I love how you had the opposite problem as we have at our prayer meeting.... Do you think there's some kind of cultural difference between Americans and Peruvians re: prayer?