It sure seems like I'll never get caught up. I've got a lot of things to relate that happened this last week yet.... today is Saturday and I have yet to speak about last Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, let alone write about today! Gah! I'll never get all this done!
Well let's start this post with the day that started the week:

SUNDAY

It took everyone a little bit of time to get ready to go to church but there was plenty of time and my father worked on putting things inside the camper for storage and underneath and securing everything. Then we put in the slideout and hooked it up to the truck and hauled it down to the church. It is difficult to find a spot to park a Ford truck and a long fifth wheel, especially when I related that there was another church that met in the community centre and there were usually lots of cars. That is why I started parking my car outside of the parking lot. I figured that there were many people who could use the convenience much more than I, particularly the elderly.

I really enjoyed the Sabbath School, Pastor gave a very good overview in the time he had. In one sense I am always disappointed that we don't go into more depth, but on the other hand he probably went into more depth than he was "supposed" to, considering that it is merely a survey of the New Testament, or in other words, a big picture sort of thing and definitely not for discussing individual doctrines to any great length. I should have warned my parents though because I could tell they were just shocked at the speed with which everything has been going. This is his third week though (if I recollect correctly) and he has already spent more time than he "should have," relatively speaking. I really appreciated that he reviewed a few things (such as pulling out his sheet of paper with passages corresponding to different doctrines in the Corinthian epistles) for the sake of the new people, or more specifically, my family. I noticed that as well in the main service that followed, that Pastor would review a few things and it was mainly for the sake of my family and the Yule's cousins I am sure, and I appreciated it.

I know my mother really enjoyed talking to Mrs. C and Mrs. N a lot and my Dad with the men. I had always felt right at home with the church, it is essentially like a family to me and I felt among brothers and sisters. As I sit here writing this I actually do miss my "family" but I shall (D.V.) return in January, about 2 weeks from now and I'm looking forward to that. I never fit in at all in the Baptist church here, there are some really nice people but there was never any depth, I would be asked how school was going, what I was doing, etc. but I felt as though they were just stiff questions to ask simply because it was the "thing" to do and the outcome would have been the same whether I had answered the question or not. That may be a bit unfair though because there are at least a couple of families that do ask about me when I'm gone from here and I do know they care, but for the most part of the people it seems to be mere politeness, it's usually really easy to tell if a person is sincere or not. Which reminds me of a quote from George Burns.....

"Sincerity is one of the most important traits in a man...... If you can fake that, you've got it made."

Just before the service, I tried to gather enough chairs so my family could sit all together, not a very easy task! I would have been content with two rows even but for my family being essentially a "newcomer" to the church, I didn't feel like splitting it up into two or three (as it would have been) groups and spreading them all over would have been very pleasing to my parents! There were more visitors that day so that helped the problem I'm sure. It actually wasn't that hard to find extra chairs and I made a row of eight in the back and grabbed about 4 Psalters for the family. I really enjoyed the sermon on Psalm 148, Pastor has a way of making it relevant to the children especially and I appreciate that, it's not "dumbed down" like a lot of people will do, but put into terms that children can understand. Children can understand a lot that we don't give them credit for and just as with a language, the quickest way to learn is to fully immerse someone, in the same manner, by immersing a child in issues of doctrine, he or she will learn quite a bit. In so many churches the children are "shooed" out as soon as the service starts and go to play somewhere because they wouldn't understand anyway. Come to think of it, the adults in those churches are like babes themselves at times, desiring milk when they should be eating solid food.

I have been growing a lot lately myself. At the Baptist church here I had often felt as though I was more knowledgeable than most of the people here and that set me up in a prideful state of mind I believe, looking back upon it. I seriously need to work on my abundance of pride constantly! Even as Mr. Vaknor said a couple of Sundays ago, we often tend to be prideful of what denomination or who we follow (the "I'm of Calvin" argument) and I admit that after really enjoying certain aspects of my church, I will look at others as being a bit below or something, less enlightened so to speak. How appalling it is to look back at that attitude though, and frightening! It's a constant struggle of my mind and heart, to act in love and sensitiveness and not pride. Hopefully that doesn't come out in my speech with other people (I don't believe it does) but I know it is in my heart. Coming alongside as a loving brother in Christ is vastly different from standing aloof in disdain.

Afterwards was the lunch. There was plenty of food, Mrs. Yule had promised to bring extra enchiladas (which I have to state that my youngest sister really, really enjoyed) and my family had brought a large pot of spaghetti, which I didn't know about until the day before. So there was plenty of food and all very good! I think my next oldest brother agrees with me that when you get in a group of homeschoolers you're almost intimidated because it seems like they are all so intelligent! We're used to being around other kids and when you get around people who actually understand puns and "intelligent" jokes, it's quite a difference! Usually it's just my brother and I telling eachother things that almost no one else would "get." There are many well-instructed youth at the church and I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

I also must say that I was able to meet Mrs. Yule's mother, it wasn't very much in depth but she asked Mrs. Yule
"did you tell him?" To which the response was negative and then she said "Well good, don't tell him." And I'm just standing there, not quite bewildered but just er... slightly on the curious side might be a good description? I must admit though, I'm not extremely dumb and put two and two together rather quickly, along with some previous questions to some key people and I am sure I know the "secret" since she did mention my blog and I knew everyone who has commented save one. ;)

Pastor offered to discuss communion with my parents and I appreciated it very much but my father was already stretching himself by letting us stay for lunch (I would have stayed all day and taken them to the Vaknor's if I could) and since it was a six hour drive to our destination, that didn't work out. We had to get going so I said goodbye to the boys mainly and those who happened to be near and we took off. I was going to miss the people at the church for the next three weeks.

The drive was good, I drove with my two brothers in the car, the younger one played games in the back etc. but my brother and were able to talk about a lot of "important" things that we'd not been able to for a long time, getting a lot of good "geeky" jokes out of our system etc. As we drove through towns it was somewhat amusing to look at all the different churches, "Glansing Liberty Freewill Baptist Church" or something like that, the names were very long and odd sometime, I guess they wanted to differentiate themselves from the other churches. I imagine that there must have been splits. My Grandpa William told us that there was a large church way back, a long time ago when they were making machines that would create ice and there was half of the church who didn't believe it and the other half that did believe it. The "non-believing" half split off and formed the "No-ice Baptist Church." He sounded serious but one is never quite certain with him. In any event, I wouldn't be surprised if something like that did happen, many churches will split for silly reasons such as that.

It took about six hours to drive to our grandparents house, perhaps a bit more and by the time we arrived we were all a bit tired. I like my little car for long trips but even so, after that length of time in the car I start to feel a bit stiff and cramped. It was good to see Grandma and Grandpa again, they visited this last winter at our new place here but it seemed like it had been a while. My next oldest brother and I spent the night in their fifth wheel in the large bed (much, much nicer than the floor!) and some of the family was in the house and some was in our fifth wheel (I almost say mine because it has been my home for so long).

And that brings that day to a close (only 5 more days to write about!). I must say that after a day or two of being with our grandparents, which I enjoy by the way, I was feeling like I wanted to go home. I didn't really want to drive anymore and I didn't really want to sit around, I wanted to go home! But I realized that my home is the fifth wheel, that is where I have been staying, where I have lived for the past few months and that is where I wanted to go, back to my trailer park in Stillwater. I shall be a visitor for a few weeks at my parents house but I do honestly feel like a visitor, my home isn't really there any more and in a way it's sad and in a way it isn't. Perhaps it is time for me to grow up and become an "adult," but hopefully not a boring one, Daisy ;)