The people of Iglesia Bautista Shekina have been working for several years towards their vision for building a community center on land adjacent to the church to enable them to expand their ministries to serve children, youth, and senior adults in their neighborhood. They are making steady progress in deliberate stages – clearing the land, building a wall around the property, installing a drainage system to prevent flood damage during the rainy season, and constructing a large kitchen space. The next phase includes plans for adding bathrooms, which will be funded in part by the 2011 Bridges of Hope grant from the Alliance of Baptists.
Shekina's community center space is already being put to good use for fellowship gatherings, youth meetings, outdoor worship experiences, and the church's highly successful annual community outreach program “Puertas Abiertas” in which teenagers and adults from Shekina offers a month of workshops and provides safe space and healthy relationships for neighborhood children.
This fall, thanks to the vision of a recent church member, Shekina celebrated a totally new experience in the community space. Never had anyone dreamed of using the community space for planting corn – but all of that suddenly changed after Pablo Rodriguez married a member of the church last December and joined Shekina. When Pablo, who was from the countryside, saw the space at the side of the church where the community center is being constructed, he announced that he would like to plant corn. And so began the big new adventure.
People recognized that planting corn was a way for Pablo to feel like a part of the church community, and his idea was quickly embraced even though most of the members of the urban church had no experience with gardening. The youth were especially enthusiastic about getting started, so Pastor Ruth Orantes canceled regular Bible school classes one Sunday morning and sent them outside with Pablo to begin tilling the soil and planting the seeds.
And finally, in September 2010, the people of Iglesia Bautista Shekina celebrated their first harvest of corn from their property by throwing a day-long party and inviting friends and neighbors to join in both the work and the fun. Everyone, from youngest to oldest, men and women, teenagers, boys and girls, divided responsibilities to spend a full day helping with the harvest, with cooking, and with clean up. All the guests at the “fiesta de maiz” feasted on freshly prepared tamales, elotes locos (grilled corn on the cob), riguas (sweet corn dough mixed with fresh cheese and beans and cooked on a hot skillet in banana leaves), and atol de elote (a traditional ground corn, cinnamon, and milk beverage).
Enjoy this slide show of photos from the day of the fiesta! Thank you to Bernhard Voegeli for the pictures.
Reflecting on the experience, Pastor Ruth feels great joy to know that Shekina is a church where everyone can feel comfortable and where new people are welcomed into the church community:
“I think about the first Christian community described in Acts, and how people began to notice and say 'Look how they love!' At Shekina, everybody wants to be involved in church life, and that picture is good for the community around us to see. Neighbors and visitors see how we share life together, and they say, 'We want to be with these people!' It is good that Shekina is a church where everyone feels comfortable and welcome. We are a place where everyone can increase our friendship and we can improve our our life together. And everyone comes with a gift to share with the community.”
--- Ruth Rodrigues de Orantes
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