Sunday church...

This morning it was our privilege to take the two aunties to church. Or so we thought. We set off to pick up Aunt Betty but when we got to her place, she had already left. We caught up to her on the freeway and followed her to the church parking lot. Once there, we realized that Aunt Thelma had been there for some time, and she had driven her own car too. So we all met up inside the church. It was very different from anything I had ever seen before at home. It had a recreation centre inside, with a full gym set up for basketball, facilities for day care and the sanctuary upstairs where the church held its services. This church is Aunt Thelma's church, and it is called Huffman Memorial Church. The family held a little discussion about which church would be the best fit for us and decided the traditional United Methodist service would be it.

Right away we saw many similarities to the United Church service in Eastend. The print out of the service followed the same order for prayer and hymn and scripture reading. The minister even called up the children for a short instruction, just like Reverend Schrag had done in Eastend. There were, however some notable differences. The Huffman Memorial Church is a lot bigger and more modern, with a large media screen high up in the far right corner. The whole congregation could read along with the various prayers and instructions. Also, the minister was far more energetic and outgoing than Reverend Schrag who was a rather quiet kind of man. But the big moment for me was when we opened the hymn book for the first hymn, and it was the same hymn we had sung in Eastend!  How is that for coincidence??  The other difference was that Aunt Thelma stood up in the church and announced us as guests from British Columbia to the congregation and afterwards we were surrounded with many kind people shaking our hands and welcoming us to the service. All in all, it was a lovely experience for someone as inexperienced in church attendance as myself.

After the service and the socializing moments, we all headed back to Aunt Betty's place. Janet was already there in front of us, unloading our lunch which was composed of all the leftovers from the birthday bash. I happen to love leftovers, I consider them better than the originals. And Janet had even pre-warmed them so all we had to do was serve them up and eat. Janet couldn't stay because her grandson Josh was playing in a football game. I thought Josh had turned 11. Aunt Thelma thought it was 10 and Aunt Betty said 9. I think we need to consult with Janet about this. Because of the football game, Josh wouldn't be coming over for the scrabble game with Aunt Betty and Aunt Thelma.

Can you even imagine the incredible experience of playing scrabble with your great-grandmother and your great-great-aunt when you are 11 (or 10 or 9 as the case may be)????  I was having a serious case of envy of Josh. What a lucky young man he was, growing up surrounded by all these layers and layers of family...

Aunt Betty gave all of the leftover brownies to Rick (she baked them herself) so we have plans for this evening which involved several downloaded TV programmes and lots of chocolate brownies. Yum.  See y'all tomorrow.