Hi -
"Chapita" is a basic, easy set-up way of playing baseball with just a stick and a bottle cap, and especially in Venezuela, just about every kid grows up playing this game. It's kind of fun actually, and miraculously enough, I was able to hit a few caps without the pitcher intercepting them, and thus score a few points.
Playing chapita got me thinking about how churches everywhere have had to adjust to the harsh reality of Covid-19. Church formats which would have been considered obscure and almost illegitimate a few months ago, have nearly become standard practice all over the world... One of the things that I most appreciate about this pandemic, is that the church has finally woken up to the fact that we are not a building.
...So while the main church I've been involved with here in Bogota has done a great job of adapting to doing things on-line, I was noticing that especially among my poorer Venezuelan friends, asking them to connect to two-hour by-weekly Zoom meetings was not working... Most of my Venezuelan friends' cell phones aren't very state of the art, and plus, their internet connectivity is fairly limited...
Just because of that, I'm not going to stop sharing the gospel, or giving up meeting with my friends in person... Basically, I believe that Jesus's command of making disciples of all nations takes precedence over government's requirement of social distancing, even though we all agree that this pandemic is no joke, and that we should still take as many precautionary measures as possible.
I feel like it's kind of like chapita. Does this strange game with no stadiums or gloves or bases or outfielders really even have the right to be considered a sport? ...I guess I don't know, but it gets pretty close, and it's definitely better than playing nothing at all.
...Are the Sunday morning gatherings where we take part in the Lord's Supper and study the Scriptures and pray and have fellowship and worship together on a roof or in a park with about 15 other Venezuelans really a church? Yes, I think we are - even though there are a lot of things that we can improve on, and we're still not immune to Coronavirus.
...Not having a building to meet in where we could get sanctioned by the government is a lot cheaper as well, and it's a lot more reproducible (or contagious even), just like this pandemic...
-Sam
P.S. This Wednesday, August 26th I'll be getting civilly married to Alejandra! (stay tuned for when we we'll have our wedding), and then we'll be heading to the border with Ecuador in my recently purchased SUV (see picture #1). There, we'll be picking up a Venezuelan family that Alejandra and I both got to know a couple years ago when we were starting a church that continues to function in Cucuta (Colombia's main border city with Venezuela) under the leadership of another great Christian family from Venezuela that I've been sponsoring ever since February (see picture #2). Frank and his pregnant wife Anabel, along with their 3 children have been struggling a lot since the beginning of the pandemic, and were stranded for over 3 months in Ecuador during which they even had to live on the street for a few days (see picture #3)... In the initial part of this situation, Alejandra and I were able to send them some money so they could stay in a hotel, and eventually they received some help from a foundation that took up their case. Recently they were cleared to cross the border into Colombia, and their desire is to make it back to Venezuela. Hopefully Alejandra and I will be able to help in this process... We both feel that fighting for their family at this time is a good way to start our own.
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