A Surprising and Awesome God

What image comes to your mind when you hear the word church? For me, it was once a picture postcard of a New England village. An elegant building with a white steeple and chiming bells. Falling autumn leaves and the fruits of an abundant harvest. Hymns and organ music. Reverent, silent prayer. Church for me was tradition—a lovely place to celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. It was a safe place where emotions were checked carefully at the old wooden door. No one ever cried, or laughed, or got angry on the inside of that door. At St. Paul’s Lutheran church in Wethersfield, Connecticut, the members did not get unruly, or talk during the service. Instead they sang, read scripture, and recited the Apostles’ Creed. This was the church of my childhood. A church of discipline and order. But God wanted a bit of chaos for me. He wanted me to feel completely displaced, raw, and vulnerable.

From the moment I walked through the railed door of the church Dios Con Nosotros, God made it clear to me that the experience I was about to have had nothing to do with my book and everything to do with my growth and faith. There were no church bells at Dios Con Nosotros. But there was a large hollow box upon which a young man sat, beating out rhythm with his hands. There was no organ and no familiar hymns. But there was a keyboard and flamenco voices raised in song. And there was not for a single moment, reverence or silence. Children played in the aisles. Their parents answered cell phones in the middle of a service. There was shouting, and chaos, and passion like I had never known before. It was crazy. “Why did you bring me here?” I asked my father desperately. “You know me. I’m not comfortable with people screaming, or jumping up and down, or shouting out their prayers.”

And then I heard Him say to me, “Yes, Susan, I do know you. And this is exactly where you need to be.” And He was right. I had never felt so much love, or passion, or longing for God’s spirit as I did in that humble church in the middle of a drug-infested ghetto. I cried when I heard the Lord’s voice that day. In fact, I cried many more times over the weeks to come because I was in God’s presence, and He was healing me. Perhaps he was also preparing me for something I had not planned on. God told me through Pastor Pepe a few nights later that I had come to Seville to research a book, but He had brought me to Dios Con Nosotros for an entirely different purpose. God wanted me to trust Him. Away from all that was familiar, and safe, He wanted me to praise him. And I did—Gypsy style—with my arms raised and my voice lifted in fervent prayer. And finally, I was able to minister to women whose stories I did not know, but whose pain I understood. And as I ministered to them, God ministered to me. Away from New England’s autumn leaves, church steeples, and quiet traditions, I was finally ready for the harvest.

The Odyssey Begins

The word odyssey is often defined as an extended adventure, or as an intellectual or spiritual quest. I often wonder where my quest began. Or why I was moved to write a book set in Gypsy Spain. I’m sure God knew. He just wasn’t giving me all the details.

And I, given the nature of my personality, didn’t need to know. I’m a fiction writer. For more hours than I care to admit, I live in a fictional world. Anything is possible. I see stories that other people don’t, or aren’t compelled to see. But my novel Azahar (orange blossom in Spanish) did not start as a story; it started as an experience. I first traveled to Spain as a wide-eyed-twenty-two-year-old anxious to see the world. I didn’t know anything about Spanish Gypsies then. All I knew was, as Jeff Goins says on his blog Pilgrimage of the Heart, “they were the kind of people the travel agencies warned you about.” (check out Jeff’s encounter with Gypsies on his blog jeffgoins.myadventures.org. It’s a great story). I heard similar warnings repeated by Spaniards. “Be careful around the Gypsies; they’re cheats, liars, and thieves. Maybe. I suppose some of them were. But when several Spaniards started confusing my friend from India with a Gypsy, and treating him accordingly, a story formed in me. That man from India is now my husband, and the confusion his ethnicity caused eventually inspired a novel.

Twenty-six years later, that novel finally germinated. But, I knew that in order to do justice to subject I was writing about, I had to return to Spain. And this time, I had to meet and get to know the people whose culture I was writing about. The only problem was, I knew that most of the Gypsies in Seville lived in poor, dangerous sectors of the city. My husband knew that too. The only way I was going to convince both my husband and my pastor that I would be safe in these marginalized areas was by connecting with a Christian church that had ministries in the Gypsy community. Well, to make a long story short, I ended up in a Pentecostal Gypsy church called Dios Con Nosotros (God With Us), in one of the most sordid sectors of the city (Las Tres Mil Viviendas). And the day I arrived, Pastor Pepe clearly told me that God had not brought me into his church for my book, but for a very different purpose.

And so it would seem. God transformed my life through my experience with this group of evangelical Gypsies, and convicted me to share the power and wonder of that experience with other Christians who are faithfully following Him – wherever that may be.

Keep coming to The White Tent and experience the richness of what God can do when he chooses to transform a life.

The White Tent

The White Tent is the name I have chosen for my blog. You may be wondering why that is. The tent was, and still is, a sanctuary. It provided shelter in the desert and respite beside cool, running water. In Biblical times, the patriarchs and their families lived in tents. And during their wilderness wanderings, the people of Israel were tent dwellers, always on the move, looking for fresh pasture and water for their flocks. Clusters of tents sprang up where there was fertile land. In the book of Numbers (24:5-7) Balaam looked out and saw Israel encamped tribe by tribe and said, "How beautiful are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel! Like valleys they spread out, like gardens beside a river, like aloes planted by the Lord, like cedars beside the waters. Water will flow from their buckets; their seed will have abundant water."

The tent is a place of rest and rejuvenation. For the Evangelical Gypsies I worked with in Spain, it is also a place of hope and salvation. Periodically, large white tents are erected on the barren grounds of the poorest neighborhoods. Gypsy pastors preach God's Word and talented musicians praise the Lord with their unique style of Christian flamenco. Many lost souls who step inside those tents find not only shelter, but also peace and healing. It is this healing that I would like to share with you.

An Incredible Odyssey

Have you ever wondered what it's like to live like a Gypsy? I did. And then I stopped wondering and started planning an incredible odyssey. I went to Spain in October of 2008 and lived among the Gypsies. I'd like to take you back there with me. My life was changed in ways I could never have imagined. I hope yours will be too.