Vegas Blue at the Evangelical Church

Coming up on my second year anniversary in site, I walked with the school group to church. Let me explain, October is Clausura Season (Graduation). October is the US’s May. Schools are finishing up the last weeks of study and, well in my opinion, wasting time on activities like Tardes Deportivas or Cleaning Days. But actually these things are necessary, I just feel like they are a waste of my time as I cannot give my sessions or report any work. On these days I’m a foreign placeholder that occasionally cracks jokes, takes pictures and bucks the system- “Why are the girls the ones in charge of preparing the snack for everyone?” The male teachers responses leave something to be desired. They know I don’t like it but they aren’t going to change it. Gender Roles. Just like arm pits and opinions, we all got ’em. 

The point is that predictability predictably begins to dwindle as the school year comes to a close and news doesn’t reach me until I show up (oh wait, all year long). So I usually, well at this point, don’t show up. Because I know that there won’t be classes but in place of what? It’s the world’s guess.

So this night would be a new experience. I had been invited to go to church services with the students of Cedcom (as Madrina, you know) to a special service at the Evangelical Church. I don’t have my bearings about the Evangelical Churches in site because I make it a point to walk past them rather than into them (My Father’s Job is to invite people into the Evangelical Church and here I am hoping to avoid them. Sorting through that dynamic was the emotional adventure of my 20s). But this night I would buck-up and go in. 

I have been to about 4 church services in Santa Clara because I attended with my host mom when I first got to site in the name of Site Integration and Family Acceptance. I did not get into explaining My Faith Journey to my host family because there’s not so much a place for my stance: Agnosticism. You are either Católico or Evangélico (which they also call, confusingly, Cristiano). Luckily my host family is Catholic except for some errant cousins. I will explain more on that preference later. What I noticed about the Catholic services were that the women wore scarves draped over their shoulders and scaling their heads, a sign of respect, I think. But it made me feel uncomfortable because the men are meant to take their hats off out of respect but the women are supposed to cover theirs. But even if I found it a little odd, I was in awe of the beautiful woven fabrics that seemed to surround me as I sat amongst them in my black pants and formal work shirt, the most churchy thing I had to wear. I was the least colorful of them all. The other thing I felt weird about was the apron. Women wear aprons as apart of the traje, and they are convenient: they serve as napkins, towels, tissues for wiping noses, wallets with the convenient zipper pouch on one side and they are fabricated out of traje fabric, sometimes with the shiny embroidery on the edges. They are the exclamation point on any full traje. My host mom once left the house in her old apron so we had to turn back for her new apron before we went to church. 

In my mind, it’s an apron. And if women wore aprons out and about, to go shopping or go to church in my country, well that would be odd. I understand it’s value for functionality but where I get confused is when it becomes an aesthetic accessory. However, I am not from here. For all I know, I am an aesthetic accessory, being gringa and walking down the street. 

As we walked down the street to church in the night air, the teachers and students with their parents, we passed the plaza and arrived to the outside of the church building. We paused outside. The school secretary (also my K’iche’ teacher) gave instructions to the group on where the students should sit and stand: white seats for the parents, beige (beige in Spanish) for the students. I didn’t know where I fit in. We waited outside the church for our “entrance cue” and that’s when I realized this was an unusual church service. Usually you just go in and find your seat. So the students got in line with their parents on either side of them and we ebbed into the church, up the steps and into the sanctuary. I’ve passed this church a bunch of times and never known it’s insides. When I walked in, I was very surprised. The bright lights, the modern (for pueblo) architecture, and again, the bright lights. You think you know a place…. and all the time, just around the corner, there’s been Vegas Church going on. 

Yes, the loud music of the Evangelical Praise Teams enter my bedroom 4 nights a week: Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. But I don’t know which church it is coming from. I just know that the noise comes in like it’s right next door to me, like it might as well be the rooster upstairs from my bedroom. It’s a myth that roosters only crow at sun-up. They crow for recognition, all. day. and. all. night. long.

The church was brightly lit from front to back and not just with an intense white light but with BLUE lights. And the ceiling had modern tray designs and edges from which the lights shown down. I wondered about the expense of constructing this building and maintaining it. As in, how much is the power bill? In Guatemala you turn the light off when you leave the room, you unplug the TV when you are done watching it, you don’t leave the computer charger in after it’s charged. (If you have these appliances)… In our kitchen we have one lightbulb in the center of the room and it casts a dim light. In the bedroom/living room there are two light bulbs. One over Abuelita And Mama’s bed, and one over Clara’s. There are zero lamps in the house (except mine). So I stood in this church for two hours and looked at these lights that were bright enough to give me a suntan and I thought: Who Is Paying For This? I mean, I know I could find out the answer but the question wasn’t so much Who but Why? Why do my neighbor kids have rotting teeth because they don’t brush them and why do women die in childbirth and why do people die of unknown causes but we pay a ton of money for bright lights for God who is supposed to save us. But you know what, I am agnostic. If I believed in God maybe a church would be the most important place to be lit up in Vegas Blue. I don’t know. 

At the beginning of the service, they asked for an offering and the bucket was at the front. It was curious to me that the bucket stayed at the edge of the stage instead of being passed through the congregation, but then I considered that it would be harder for anyone to steal from the collection plate it everyone’s eyes were on it. I wonder if that is why, or if they simply don’t care to coordinate the passing of the plate up and down the aisles. I grabbed a few Q and deposited them with a clank. I knew that all eyes were on the gringa and I better follow suit. 

The pastor called up all of the students who were graduating (only three were there from the grade that corresponded with me, the rest were strangers). They were all dressed up, some in suits and some in skirts, the boys just had their heads shaved along the sides and floppy up top (always). The preacher kept saying the word desempeño which I looked up later. I kind of knew it but didn’t. It means performance. Academic performance I think. And I sat next to the new school director, hardly knowing him, and feeling out of place. I looked around at the faces who attend this church every week. I saw Glindy Tixa and Evelín up in the balcony, sisters at church. So cute those two. The two-story space probably held 250 people. I saw Doña Catarina, the one who invited me to lunch in her behemoth house that looks like it’s from the USA, and I saw her kids sitting on her lap. I recognized a lot of faces in the building, and it was like I was seeing another side of their lives that I never knew. They each knew the clapping cadence that I didn’t. I recognized many of the songs, but not all. 

And then I hopped on my next high-horse after electricity: Feminism. I was excited at the beginning that there was a Man and a Woman both with microphones in hand. They were leading the service like it was Combate: a male and female host. But then after the preacher called all the students up, the mic got passed over to The Worship Team. And The Worship Team included A Drummer, Three Guitarists and a Piano Player. They called up a woman to join them for one of the first songs and she carried a small notebook, opened it up, and focused her gaze on the lyrics while she sang firmly into the mic. This was all fine with me: it put faces to all of the bulla that invades my room at night. But then the mujer with the notebook finished the song and was dismissed back to her seat in the congregation. Then the worship music heated up. And I could tell that the gentleman with the main guitar in the center and the rockstar hair (kind of) and Lead Singer Posture was going to be in control. I looked at the people who surrounded him on stage, each one was a dude. And I slowly became furious. Because if they were all women up there, it would be called The Women’s Worship Team. But this is not called The Men’s Worship Team, this is just called The Worship Team. Neutral, men being the default position. And why it made me upset wasn’t because I am worried for the wellbeing of Santa Clara in terms of gender roles, because that’s not really my place to judge, but it bothered me for me. This is the type of church I grew up in. And My Mom was often the one female vocalist along with the male guitarist/vocalist, male drummer, male pianist, and that was just The Worship Team. The Male Preacher (my Dad) the Male Elders who passed the communion plates, The Male Deacons who made the financial decisions of the church. And what did the women do? Childcare. Not that much has changed in the last 20 years, from Rural Guatemala to a young church in Tampa, Florida, that in many ways, shaped my perception of gender roles and the world. 

So, I took my notebook out. I wrote down words I didn’t know, like desempeño, and I kept thinking to myself: You think you know a place… After two years you think you’ve seen it all, smelled it, heard it, eaten and touched it all. But then you go to Vegas Blue Church and see the distinct clapping rhythms and the Rock Star Hair music leader and you realize that you will never fully know a place. Not even your home of 2 years or your home of origin. After the service they dismissed the students to walk out with their parents, and then the Emcees began to individually dismiss the staff. Uh-oh. I was the last one on the row. I imagined they would skip me, leave my egress without commentary, but that would be incredibly rude in this culture. So instead they addressed the elephant in the room: “Y tenemos aquí una persona muy importante….” I was literally almost dying inside from the laughter. I smirked and laughed and made a show of walking down the aisle and to the back of the church. How important could I be if they didn’t know my name? But that was the whole thing. You think a place knows you too, but still there are some who don’t. “The Persona Muy Importante” as my distinguished title. 

I knew there would be refa because there is always refa. That is Guatemalan snack. It involves a liquid and a solid, always. The male students carried baskets of chuchitos, my favorite Guatemalan snack, which is tortilla dough wrapped around a small piece of chicken and tomato sauce. It’s cooked inside la tusa, the corn husk. I’ve eaten upwards of 200 chuchitos in the last two years, probably more. And the girls passed around warm, sugary tea in styrofoam cups. I waited until most everyone appeared to have their refa to eat mine. I wondered who prepared all this food for the whole congregation? The students must have pooled their money and prepared it. They offered me a second chuchito and they didn’t have to twist my arm. I stowed it in my purse. 

As we walked home, the school director told me there would be another service at the Catholic Church the next night. I told myself I would go pero when push came to shove and I knew I had a full-day of 2 graduations on Friday, I skipped out on Thursday night Church Round Two Catholic Version. 

An experience that reminded me of home but was unique in and of itself. A night worth experiencing to know a place a little more, even if I was mystified at moment’s and amused at others. And “una persona muy importante…”