Sunday Morning

The "BCP" where Boquete Bible Fellowship meets.

One of my prayers before we left on this trip was that God would show me that there was a community of genuine spirit-filled believers here that we could be a part of.  I had contact with a couple of homeschoolers online and was hoping they would be such people.  Not so confident of that now.  The family we met with for lunch Saturday was friendly but not church-goers, and the other homeschoolers are not in town this week.  So, I came to church Sunday morning still feeling pretty out of place here. 

The Boquete Bible Fellowship is apparently the only real English-speaking church in town.  It meets at the Boquete Community Players, a theater and "event center" opened by local expats.  We arrived at 8:30 for the potluck breakfast hour before service started at 9:30. 

Immediately, I met Karen, an African-American woman from Atlanta, and Thelma, a mother of two boys from Texas.  Thelma sat with us at breakfast and talked about schools and volunteer work at the Casa Esperanza, an after-school program for the Ngobe Bugle children.  (The Ngobe Bugle are the indigenous people in the area -- very poor.)  She introduced me to the Ngobe gentleman who runs the program and we arranged a time to meet at the Casa on Monday.

We heard that the church usually has about 60 in attendance, but numbers were low today, probably because the main pastor and the music leader were both out of town.  But another woman in the congregation led the music -- we sang to some youtube videos of hymns and praise songs.  A retired chaplain in the church preached while the kids went to Sunday School (our youngest attended the SS class and our oldest was drafted to help with the younger kids in another area).

Our youngest and some kids she met in Sunday School.

During one song, I started to cry.  I wasn't even sure why.  I just finally felt like this was a place I belonged, like these were people I could relate to.  We still don't know if we're moving here, but if we do, I will at least feel like I have a home base to come to and get recharged.