Ever get that urge to laugh at the wrong time? Well it happened to me on Sunday.
It’s hard to imagine until you have attended our church. We are absolutely bursting at the seams. Our most recent record was 232 people. And we meet on a porch…and a living room, and dining room, and foyer…and we’re spilling over into the rest of our gracious pastor’s home. While permits and construction on our new building inch along we continue to grow. The result is that we’re all squeezed in as tight as one can fit the chairs. And the Latino Baptist format requires that you stand for every song and scripture reading which means jostling to your feet without knocking over the person next to you.
On Sunday we lost our “ideal” seats to another gringo couple who beat us to them. So we were forced to take what was left. I was squashed between hubby and a rather broad shouldered young man named Marlon. They teased about squeezing in tight. Between them and the fact that the chair for the aisle in the opposite direction was almost touching my knees, I felt rather claustrophobic. And then there’s the fact that the Spanish language can be so polite. The person up front announced, “puede sentarse” which means essentially, “can you please sit?” and it just slipped out before I could stop, “no puedo!” “I can’t!” Well, unfortunately several people around me have rather good hearing and I set off a little ripple of laughter right before prayer…