New Church Wrap Up

We liked the church service last night.  The weather was beautiful and the park is lovely and shaded.  There is nothing like singing worship songs outside.  We were greeted and welcomed.  No one asked Bob to join the choir but no one mentioned the disability support group either so there’s that.  In the bulletin there were name tags so whenever we were greeted, it was by name.  It was a little disconcerting until we remembered we had name tags on. 

We didn’t go for the pre-service meal but we did stay for the post service communion and ice cream. (Um, they are not served together, although wouldn’t THAT be fun!  A communion wafer stuck jauntily in your ice cream with a nice red wine sauce poured over the top?)  Bob liked the service enough that he is actually talking about going on his own while I’m in class.  I think that’s a good sign.  If that’s the case, I may take in a Sunday morning service on my own while in school.

They did do this cool thing where they handed everyone a prayer card to write prayer requests.  After the first worship song, someone came around and collected the cards and we were told there was a team of people praying for each card during the service.  That’s cool. 

As I was preparing to back up the van to leave, another van slowly cut us off and pulled up along side us.  I rolled down the passenger window and this odd man told us to look him up online because he had some information on the important work being done with stem cells.  He made me repeat his web address and promise to look it up.  Then he backed up and took off.  Ooookaaaay.  Unfortunately when I got home my computer was acting funny so I just shut it down and read a book.  I could not remember the web address this morning so I guess we will be forever in the dark about the brave new world of stem cell research.

During the meet and greet part of the service, one of the members came over and introduced himself to us.  We said we were first time visitors and not usual attendees of this denomination.  He lowered his voice and said conspiratorially, “Oh, don’t worry.  We are the more ‘conservative’ branch of the denomination if that’s an issue for you.”  We assured him that we were OK with what we had seen, read, heard so far and he seemed OK with that. 

Later, we met the pastor who asked where we were from. When we mentioned the area where we live, he said, “Oh, quite a ways from here then.”  We laughed about that later because this church is a scant 5 miles from where we live now and the closest church we’ve attended since being married.  Our old home church was 10 miles away but took us about 20 minute to get to.  The church we thought we would move on to is in Eagan, MN and is 25 miles away and took us about 45 minutes to get to.  5 miles in 10 minutes is CAKE!

This weekend is supposed to bring temps near 100 degrees.  My plan for the weekend is to clean and do homework in air conditioned comfort.  There is some talk that I might get to utilize our budgeted clothing allowance to buy some clothes but that remains to be seen. I might also get my bike checked out and try a bike ride to church Sunday morning if it’s not too humid.  Like the saying goes, it’s not the heat that gets to me, it’s the humidity.