bible study 1...ecuadorian/gringo style

i have been obsessed with rob bell lately...and i got a couple of his NOOMA videos, which i think are great...and i brought some here with me and thought we could do some studies with them. as i was talking to rachel (one of my student's aide) and beth (new 1st grade teacher) we thought it would be good to invite some ecuadorians to the study too...and this was all going to work out because the videos have spanish subtitles.

since beth and i's spanish is below par...and rachel's spanish is a little above par...we decided we could do it...with rachel being the main translator (thanks rach :))

so beth and i were at my place, when spencer (a visitor from texas helping out MAF with computers) arrived, then Ivan (ecuadorian) arrived...which was great, except it is just hard when your spanish is barely good enough to carry on a decent conversation. rachel and "pato" arrived a few minutes later and we were ready to begin.

due to the language barrier, our song choices were limited...rachel and i know a fair amount of spanish worship songs..but since beth and spencer dont...it made things kind of difficult...and awkward without a guitar! so..we decided to sing "abre mis ojos" which is open the eyes of my heart...so we sang it with some snapping..and a little spanish mixed with some english to fill in the parts we didnt know :)

we watched the NOOMA video: Rhythm. i highly recommend it. he compares our relationship to God to a song. the song is always playing..in everyone's hearts...and the question is: are we in tune? it was a good conversation...except im not sure what the ecuadorians think of us. i was kind of facilitating the questions...and i was just asking some questions that Rob Bell asked during the video...just to get some discussion and see what people thought--which is normal in an american bible study. even though we all know the "right" answers to the questions, we like to ask them to learn different perspectives and insights.

but whenever i asked a question like that..rachel would translate, and then Ivan would find a bible verse to answer our question (which was very impressive!)....that was fine to answer with a verse...but im not sure if were we all totally on the same page...but I know God speaks to our hearts and the Spirit was there, so that's all that matters. i think we all got the "are we in tune" part..which was the main gist.

prayer requests were also hilarious! rachel was telling that her dad needed some prayer because he is working a lot and doesent like his new job. she went on to say that her dad was feeling a little depressed, etc. the ecuadorians asked how old he was, and she said 50. then they made a comment about that yeah, he must be tired because he is getting old! then rachel was trying to justify that he was healthy..but it was his mind that was hurting....then we just had to stop there...because they were thinking her dad was loony and in a facitlity....it was pretty hilarious....and we were ALL laughing outloud..because we were all just like...wow. we need to learn spanish..and this is funny!

so all in all, we think (the gringos) think it went well and are excited to keep meeting, studying, learning more of eachother's languages...and having fun.

ahhhh...the adventures! pray that our "study" would go well and that we would learn more about GOd and eachother's cultures in an effective and God glorifying way.