Church Sunday night

A dear teacher at Mike's school was being ordained Sunday night as a minister of the gospel.  He leads worship at a tiny church in the poor, minority section of the city.  The pastor of the church also teaches at our school, and they've been serving at this church for 5 years.  We were invited to Max's ordination.  First, about Max.  Max was raised in Panama.  He is trilingual, teaches Spanish at the school, plays guitar and sings.  He leads mission trips to the jungles in Panama(think travel 3 hours by canoe to get to the villages) each summer--Yeah baby, you know I want to go!  We love Max.  So we loaded up Sunday evening and went.  The church is behind a liquor store in the hood in the part of the city where people have big fences around their front yards and strangers to the neighborhood probably lock their doors when driving by.  Really, I'm not exaggerating at all.  It shares a building with a Head Start daycare for educationally at-risk children.  I LOVED being there.  Talk about an authentic church.  Everything was old.  No fancy PowerPoint presentation, no hands-free mics, children sitting with their parents instead of being wisked away to nursery, hymnals from 1975, different ethnicities together.  It was similar to when I was at a church service in Nicarauga(except for the air conditioner).  The people there weren't waiting to be entertained.  A breath of fresh air.