Vigilia

Jeremy Spangler
April 1, 2008

Vigilia. What does that mean? Over the months that we have been here, I have learned quite a bit about this word. It is Spanish for wakefulness or vigilance. In our first month here, I had a roommate named Johnny. Johnny said this word to me one evening in a conversation not long after we got here, and I did not know what it was, so I looked it up. I was still confused as to what he was getting at, and over the next month with him I saw what he meant. Johnny works as a plumber with long hours. He would spend the night in the upper room of the church next to our house and he told me he would read and pray until about midnight, then sleep for about three hours and get up and read and pray then go to work at five.
The night of Thursday, April 28, about 120 people from the Shalom Congregation gathered in the front yard Brother Carlos in La Mata, not far from central Charallave to have what was called La Gran Vigilia: Adoremos al Rey (The Great Vigilance: We adore the King). We stayed up through the night praying and worshipping and having theatre and singing contests. It was a lot of loud music, testifying, and passion, all for the King, all night long. The reason for a vigilia on this night was because it is ‘the night’ that Jesus prayed and sought the guidance of God before he was crucified and in the same way we adored the King and sought his guidance through the night.
The one thing I saw through the whole night was love. Love for our King and love for each other, which represents all the more loving our King. It did not matter how someone sang, acted, performed, or anything else, it was known they did it because they loved the King and wanted to adore Him.
The next day I asked Pastor Ceferino about noise annoying the neighbors and he responded, “Ni importa, están acostumbrado.” Which mainly means it does not matter, they are used to it. It is not unusual here for parties to have extremely loud music, which can be heard for blocks and can go for hours into the night. Though we have been here for the time we have, it does not mean that we are used to it though.