Of Sports and Food

Soccer was wet. Very wet. It wasn’t a full-sized soccer field and it didn’t have one blade of grass on it. So, it was like playing in dirt. With the cold, heavy rain, it was more like playing in Mud. =] I had better days in soccer. Anyway, quite a few of the guys came back to the church with proudly-earned leg cuts and bruises.

After soccer, the guys had Asado in church. Asado is one superb aspect of Argentinean culture. What is it? Asado is a feast of meat! Tons of glorious, juicy, thick meat. A thin girl’s worst nightmare and any guy’s piece of heaven. The beef ribs were spiced up, rock-salt marinated, barbequed over hot charcoal until the scent of it could make any Arnold Schwarzenegger quiver at the knees. Not to mention having our stomachs drained of all food and nutrients after the grueling soccer match. Among the guys we met that night: Carlitos, Pablo, Jose, Danny, Mario, Santiago, Caesar and Sebastian.

• Thursday

Tyler and I skipped breakfast on Thursday. We were pooped out from the first few days. At church, our band got down to planning the weekend worship service. However, not much practicing was done due to various problems with the sound system. The acoustic guitar didn’t help either. It de-tuned itself every 10 minutes into playing it. The weekend services are intended to be evangelistic, so most of the songs had to be sung in Spanish. The language barrier also made it a little different. We could not be too flexible in the structure of songs; the worship leader had to know specifically where the verses and choruses were placed beforehand. This was to prevent chaos.

Evening came, and it was time for our first Ministry-Sharing. We started with two simple songs and proceeded to discuss Evangelism and Discipleship. Marcelo shared with us about Discipleship classes he was leading in Centro Crecer. Sebastian told us about prison ministry and follow-up ministry. I had stuff running in my mind after that. Should BSU have a discipleship class? How about the trailer park ministry? Some other observations I made: there wasn’t much freedom to preach the gospel in the universities. But still, compared to the BSU, efforts to evangelize are done more directly and aggressively. They seem to focus more on conveying honest biblical truth and then believing that God will do the rest. This is different from BSU-type evangelism which focuses on building relationships first. I’m not saying one way is better than the other. Yet, this reminds me that the Word of God does cut through soul and spirit. Is it time for a change in strategy? Or at least analyze other methods of evangelism? Besides, we DO have the freedom to do what they cannot (on university grounds).