Spanish Worship

I've haven't written about my worship experience in Guatemala yet because I've still been processing it. I learned twelve songs in Spanish and led worship four times while we were there. Two of those times were about 50 minute sets for churches with about 200-300 members. Kenneth played drums, Joey played bass, and we had a couple of people from the Spanish worship teams join us.

Our team was familiar with playing all the songs. About half of them were familiar to both Spanish and English speaking cultures.

Friend Of God - Michael Gungor and Israel Houghton
Trading My Sorrows - Darrell Evans
Meet With Me - Lamont Hiebert
We Lift You Up - Glenn Packiam
Mighty To Save - Reuben Morgan and Ben Fielding
Came To My Rescue - Hillsongs United
Breathe - Marie Barnett
Close To You - Fred Hammond
Refuge - Hope Clark
Let It Rain (chorus)
Revelation Song - Jennie Lee Riddle
Holy Is He - Hope Clark

I practiced the Spanish for a couple of weeks. The guys were thrown a bit when we had our first sound check in country because they were used to hearing English words as their cues. After both church services in Quetzaltenango, people came up to me rattling off Spanish, expecting me to understand them. I'd smile and sheepishly tell them that I only understood a little.


It was different, but so good. It was a little strange to be communicating to God outside of my natural language, but it was an incredible experience. It made my worship very intentional. Because I had to work at it, I meant every word... I thought about every word... I sang my heart out of every word. I couldn't take a song for granted, or think about something else while I sang. I thought about the words, and what they meant, and why I was singing them. We've brought that experience back to our church and have done some song entirely in Spanish since we've been back.