You can learn a lot about a place traveling with missionaries. On a trip to Guatemala, I ended up in the back of a pickup truck with my sister and friend on the way to a revival. Not being a regular revival-goer, I wasn't quite sure what was going to go down. Apparently, traditionally Catholic Central America is becoming big-time born again territory. When we got to the packed warehouse size church, the event had already started and as we walked to our seats, we started to notice that something strange was going on. Looking around, there were people standing up crying like they had just lost a family member, rocking on their feet and wailing for hours. There were others, who were staggering around like college freshmen on a Friday night that we were later told were "drunk in the spirit". Say what? Still others were speaking in tongues while others laughed hysterically for hours. This guy speaking in tongues--to the tune of "abombolebobole" to this day makes me shudder.

The speaker, a charismatic leader and somewhat of a local legend in the born again community was famed to be "anointed" by God, and looking around it was clear that everyone believed it. For his grand finale, he walked around the crowds and put his hand on people's foreheads while his helpers stood behind to catch people as they fainted and writhed around on the ground, again laughing or crying hysterically. Later, when their anointed touch wore off, they were like "whaaaa happened?" When he got to us, he pushed on our foreheads for a while until he realized that we weren't going anywhere and, disappointed, he moved along for the next believers. By the end, everyone was on the ground minus us 3 skeptics. Although I really don't believe in the whole "anointed" story, I wondered afterwards how people could laugh and cry like that for hours--maybe believing makes strange things possible.