Culto Unido

It has now been a month since you've read an update on my life from this venue. It's been a busy month of teaching, dancing and planning for teaching. This past weekend (June 1) was the annual culto unido of the Mennonite church in Peru. Every year, as many people as can come from all the churches meet in one place, bringing with them their food, culture, and a desire to worship God. It is a beautiful day, a tiny foretaste of "there before me was a multitude of people from every nation, tribe, and tongue standing before the throne (of God)". Each church is requested to bring a special number (dance, worship, skit, etc) to share with everyone. It's a day I always enjoy and look forward to. This year, it was fun to see a number of my students at the service. In the picture are Lucero, Bethany, Alejandra, Diana and Diana's little brother Miguel, who is in Carrie's preschool class.
Being the resident missionaries at the church in Huacarpay, the Huacarpay youth were eager to include Shannon and I in the dance they wanted to prepare. After extensive discussion of what dance we wanted to do, we finally chose one called Pacasito, which, I think is native to the southern coastal region of Peru, where the earthquake hit last year. And we began practicing. Dance practice for me first required learning the steps of the dance - easier said than done! My brain is wired more for language than for dancing. Slowly but surely, with much patience, struggle and time, I began to be able to make my feet do what everyone else's seemed to do so naturally. The Huacarpay church has some serious dance talent! I found it interesting and somewhat humbling that one of my former English students now became my teacher and patiently helped my feet figure out what they were doing. Practice ended up being Friday and Saturday nights for about an hour and a half, with the exception of the last week before the dance, when we practiced every night. Finally, the night before the dance, we went through the entire thing without stopping, exactly like it was going to be the next morning. I have the dance on film. Unfortunately, however, it's too large to upload to Blogger. I was, however, able to upload it to Facebook, for those of you who are able to see it there. I thought I'd be able to send a link so you could all see it there, but unfortunately, I can't. Sorry about that!
The morning was a small piece of what heaven must be like as we all brought our offerings of praise in different tongues and styles before the throne of God and poured them out in worship to Him. Many-colored outfits filled the sanctuary as many voices raised praise to the one, all-powerful God who created such beautiful diversity and fellowship.
The morning also included a message from Merv Charles, making an administrative visit from the EMM offices for the weekend. Another event was the licensing of new pastors (Roberto, Raul and Octavio) and the official presentation of a new leadership team for the national church, a change which has been taking place gradually over the past few months and will become official in June. Since the Peruvian church became its own entity, separate from EMM, in 2001, Pastor Ruben Carrasco has been the president and Pastor Celestino Cutipa (my pastor at Huacarpay) the treasurer. During those 6 years the church has grown considerably and the gospel has been extended to many new places in Peru. However, Pastor Ruben was feeling the need to step down as the president in order to concentrate more on being the pastor of the church in San Jeronimo. So, earlier this year, a new leadership committee was selected for the national Mennonite church of Peru. Pastors Eloy, Roberto, David, and Paulino are joining Pastor Ruben (who is now the secretary) as the members of the leadership council. The official presentation of these leaders, as well as an official thank you to Pastors Ruben and Celestino rounded out the morning's worship service.
But the culto unido is not just a morning worship service. It's an all-day fellowship event. Everyone brings food, picnic blankets, and games. After the service, people break off into small groups, sitting around eating together. After lunch comes the annual huge soccer game with as many people as want to play. My friends and I, however, opted for a rousing game of Dutch Blitz with what ended up being, at its peak, 12 people playing in teams of 2 with 6 decks of cards. Dutch Blitz, you say? Oh yes, apparently, some missionary somewhere along the line decided that this "vonderful goot game" was so vonderful goot that it should be shared with people 3000 miles away from its birthplace. And so Dutch Blitz caught on like wildfire...
At long last, exhausted from playing soccer, warm, thanks to the bright winter sun, full of good food, having worshipped God and enjoyed our time fellowshipping together, we packed up our things and bade farewell to the culto unido until next year.