San Francisco Comunidad Cristiana

I enjoyed a great service last Sunday morning with my friends, Pastors Stan and Magdalena Lindvall at their delightful Spanish speaking Comunidad Cristiana Church in San Francisco. Stan is an MK (missionary kid to El Salvador) and we knew his parents who are long ago with the Lord.

We had the children come into the service just for the time with Perfume and Felipe. They obviously loved petting my skunk, Perfume. 

My voice was not in top shape, but Felipe did okay and the kids (and adult kids, too) were very responsive.

Felipe did his thing and everybody seemed delighted.

I keep my accordion in Argentina, since I hardly ever would use it in the USA.  But I mentioned to somebody at our Neighborhood Church and an elderly couple loaned me an ancient accordion that nobody had played for many years.  Inside the case is a plaque saying “Patented in 1931.” I was born on the last day of that same year.  It is a good brand “Hohner” and in remarkably good shape for its age (kind of like old me, ha ha). I took it home last week and tried to play it. I thought for a while that I would never get used to it, but behold… in a few hours I was getting the hang of it. My accordion has 96 bass buttons and this one is has only 80… which means that a whole row of buttons with the diminished chords are missing.  

I taught a chorus for the kids to sing with me and another to the adults to go with my message. I couldn’t believe how many times the fingers on my left hand went searching for one of those 16 missing buttons, but I doubt that anybody noticed, except me. 

I felt led of the Lord to preach to them a message directed mostly to Christians. Latins are much more fun than us stoic Anglos. They actually laugh when you are supposed to laugh and weep when it’s time to weep (Just like Brother Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 3:4) And that is what was happening, as many of them responded to kneel at the altar.  And later when some were rising from their knees, I donned the accordion again and we sang the song again that I had taught them.

After all had returned to their seats, Pastor Stan gave a clear call for the unsaved and several new visitors responded to receive Jesus, thank the Lord. I probably should have done that, but I was concerned about having preached until 1 PM… and I left it up to the pastor, who knows his people.

After the final “Amen” I noticed that people were purchasing my book and waiting in line for me to dedicate and sign it for them.  So I did that for the next 30 minutes or more.  They ended up buying all 29 of the Spanish books that I had taken and one man had to wait until next time.

Before driving home, their church cook provided us with an abundant salmon and salad dinner… delicious!

Thank you, Jesus. (I have one more service scheduled before leaving for Argentina… at a church called “The Tree” in Santa Rosa on Friday evening, March 3 at 6:30 PM.)

Ralph