Today I did one of those things that you hope to check off on you life "to do" list. I attended church at a small Black (as in African-American not the color of the building) church in the heart of the ghetto.
Some of my friends installed an alarm system at the pastor's house and then in the church itself and while they were working the pastor invited them to come to church. This morning we took them up on the offer. We went to our church first and skipped the last hour to make it to our visit on time. I'm sure we looked terribly out of place as five White kids drove around in circles, past the boarded up and burned out houses, in a Honda Civic looking for a little church house we didn't have an address for.
The service was interesting to say the least. It was in a small building (the chapel was about the size of two living rooms combined), there were about 20 members and most of the women wore a small doilly type thing on top of their heads (sorry I didn't get an explanation for that one). There was plenty of yelling and chanting and singing and we looked very subdued as we clapped along and sat quietly on our pew. It almost reminded me of a baseball game and the constant chatter that comes from the dugout. The only difference was what they were saying. As the lady preached the members all say things like, "Amen", "That's right", "Come on now preacher", "You're in the house", "Say it again" while they raise their hands, clap and stand up and sit down. The four member choir would put any ward choir I've ever seen to shame on sheer volume. The preacher was very nice and made a point to include us in her sermon. Half the time we couldn't understand what she said so we just nodded yes or no (we weren't always right with our nods. I somehow gave her the impression that I know all about the local bars and clubs and she told me she'd need to talk to my wife).
The Pastor
Aside from the obvious differences, there was a good message to the teachings. They quoted the same scriptures that we use in the Bible. She talked about getting off the fence and choosing to serve God or Mammon (she actually said "God or Mammoth"). She talked about avoiding cigarettes and alcohol a raising our kids right. She talked about not being a hypocrite and serving God all week instead of just on Sunday. Overall I felt like if was much better for the members of the congregation to be there on a Sunday morning than out on the street.
At the end of the service she got each one of us to take the mic for a minute and say a few words. We gave them some simple testimony of common beliefs and thanked them for the warm reception. Some of the people in the crowd seemed VERY surprised to see us there when they walked in the door, but the preacher assured them that there isn't a Black heaven and a White heaven and we're all going to the same place.
You can check out their website if you're interested: www.newhopeoutreachministries.com
The last thing I want to do while I'm here is go to one of those Black mega-churches with like 3000 people in the audience.
Maybe I'll go to the one with the
70 ft. tall Statue of Liberty that is holding a gold cross instead of a torch.
We assume the old Explorer is totaled (we"ll know tomorrow when the adjuster comes to look at it) so we went down to Paradise Ford and looked at cars. They are making good deals on 2009's because it is close to the end of the model year and they want to make room for the 2010's. We didn't qualify for the Cash for Clunkers so we bought this one without Brother Obama's help. They found it in Belleview, Washington so they had to send a driver over to pick it up. We signed all the papers yesterday and just hope the adjuster totals out the old one and we get a couple of thousand for it. We love the new one. It doesn't rattle, clunk, bang, heat up, pull to the right, the seat isn't torn, etc. (it was a good car and we rally enjoyed it for 11 years).
