Sunday

This last Sunday my friend Kristi invited me to go to Church with her. She's been after me to visit this church for over a month now, and finally it worked out for me to go. Neither of us have cars (or at least legally drivable cars yet) so her friend Adam said he would pick us up. I had no idea that the Adam was THE Adam I've had class with for the last two semesters and we were both surprised when he pulled up to discover that we semi-knew each other already.
The church was nestled in the heart of 'Kentucky backwoods' and we drove through miles of rolling hills just starting to become green. Acres of picket fences lined the fields that weren't covered by scraggly stands of trees, and old Southern style farmhouses were dotted here and there. They were far different from the farmhouses in the upper Midwest where my parents are. Instead of little boxes with a welcoming porch with steps leading up to it, and very pointy roofs to shed the heavy snows in the winter times these were little boxes with a porch ground level with whitewashed pillars leading up to the roof on the second-story. I'm not really sure what it is with the Southerners and their pillars, but they seem to be the preferred style of decor on buildings of any significance. Maybe its kind of like sweet tea: if you are native, you completely understand. If you are foreign, ya just never quite get it, and still rebel and go back to taking your tea HOT with sugar and, gasp of gasps, creamer or milk in it.
Anyway. Back to my poetic description of the scenery I drank in as we sped along. (We made it rather early, and the chauffeur WAS a fellow, single, male college student, which makes me think we weren't going strictly the speed limit. But hey, five mile over rule, right?) It was surprising to me how much I felt encouraged by watching cows grazing while their calves frolicked beside them and saw homesteads with the typical assortment of acreage maintaining equipment and odd junk that is usually collected by country homes. If nothing else, the visit was worth the ride.
We soon were weaving up and down and around hills with young woods and little "cow-towns'' with old trucks and rusty cars. Ahhh... refreshing. Nice cars are nice, and although I am quite capable of thriving in more elite circles, I always feel more at home and relaxed amongst grass-root (or 'peasant' if going with european terms) mid-to-lower middle class settings. I don't think my Hungarian host mom every quite understood why on earth I took such joy in what she called her 'primitive' home. (to her joy the house has been remodeled with modern appliances. I'm happy for her, but miss the old corn-cob burning stoves)
The church service was refreshing as well. Kristi taught Sunday-school for kids, and so I went to the Women's Sunday school by myself. I was the youngest by far there, but felt put at ease at once as they all jumped up and gave me hugs and showed me where the coffee was and asked me about myself. While I definitely respect my elders, there was no condescension amongst these ladies and I felt as at home with them as I used to when visiting with the mom's of the ladies in the Homeschool groups my mom ran.
We had a time of prayer requests and I shared some things that was going on in my life after some hesitation. They were sympathetic but quick to point out all the ways in which God's hand was being seen and referenced many Scriptural Truths that I knew but still needed reminded of.
There was no judgment, only a desire to encourage and build up in the faith.
Perhaps I am painting a rather perfectionist picture of my day. Of course it wasn't perfect, but it was incredibly encouraging.
The service was in a style of worship similar to that which I had grown up with. At the end of which Adam, Kristi and I were invited to one of the homes of the ladies in the Sunday school I attended for lunch. So after Adam finished helping to break down the church (they met in a high-school building and had to put everything away after each service on Sundays) Kristi and I made our way towards Adam's car. Two kids were waiting for us, a little girl and boy. The girl was whistling at the top of her lungs.
"Hey bird! Pipe down, will ya?" Adam yelled at her.
"Shut up!" she retorted.
Kristi and I exchanged glances. The next ten minutes was spent watching Adam and the two kids move stuff from his backseat into his car and exchange a volley of insults that stemmed from a long history of familial affection. Kristi whispered to me that this family had 'adopted' Adam into their hearts and the kids saw him as their big brother.
I hoped and maybe even prayed that the home we were going to wasn't a very fancy one, full of matching decorations and coffee-toned paint on the walls that all coordinated with the dishware. Silly of me perhaps, but I was enjoying the country feel of things. To my great delight, we pulled up to a little cottage/farmhouse that was obviously well loved and being renovated by the owners over a period of years. A wooden picket fence surrounded the backyard and a goldfish pond and fountain was sectioned off by the fence in a little cloistered area between the house and the garage (both of which looked to be about 80 years old). To further my joy, the lady of the house loved gardens, and crocuses and other flowering plants were peeping up through the mud. We walked into the house to a living room with mis-matched furniture -just what I was used to - and Kristi and I made our way into the kitchen. It was painted dark red with white cabinets, and hand-made wooden shelves were tucked here and there to hold Pampered Chef apparatus. I wanted to laugh with joy.
We were fed grilled pork chops, biscuits, baked and grilled potatoes, canned green beans, and our choice of an assortment of soda, sweet tea, juice, or water.
The drive back to campus was very quiet, as we had all eaten our fill and were all struggling to stay awake. Adam turned on some upbeat jazz music.

That evening I made some chicken-vegetable soup and shared it with my friends the Tant family. Aaron is at Seminary and his wife Lisa is expecting their second child, and little Eli has just entered the "Terrible Two" stage. They've been struggling financially, and since my morning was so blessed I decided to bless them with dinner. All I had was soup and laughter at their retelling of how they started dating interrupted sporadically with scolding little Eli who thought that everyone else's food looked better than his own, and kept getting down from his seat to go find something tucked away in different corners that weren't supposed to be excavated by little fingers. But they appreciated it and I appreciated them as well.

It was a nice breather because this week has been full of catering events, which I love working, but always finish exhausted. Yesterday Andrei and I were behind while setting up, and somehow an entire table ended up without napkins at any of the place settings. Not just paper napkins, the snazy cloth napkins specially folded elegantly. After we opened the doors and five people nicely informed us of the napkin-lack, I told Andrei I'd get the napkins. That involved running down three floors of stairs at the hotel, across a parking lot, through the cafeteria, into the kitchen - which was full of two flustered chefs who were behind on things themselves - into the back where the linens were, grabbing the napkins, dashing back through the cafeteria, almost crashing into a poor student simply trying to pay for his meal, back across the parking lot up the three flights of stairs and almost running into Andrei who wondered if I had gotten the sodium-free meal for one guest on a special diet for health reasons. Whew. Dashing back down across and through to learn from the one flustered-chef that the other flustered-chef had just left with the meal while I was busy dashing about.
I decided to walk slowly back to the catering event and let my sweat dry before I started serving sweet tea.

Speaking of which, I must go get ready to work my second shift of the day in said cafeteria. *sigh* My pocket-book is glad for so many extra hours. However my room mate wants me to work the 6 AM event on Saturday (which means up at 5 am again) and I already work 11-2:30 on Saturday... I pulled a 6am-2:30 pm last Saturday... not sure I want to do it again this weekend.... We'll see.

~Princess Ouch~