Let me just say that we have now been living on the ranch for one week, in texas for ten days, and out of Oregon for twelve days. It feels like ages.
We went to our first Texas church this morning, Bethany Baptist church. We actually went twice. As I believe I have mentioned, Texas (or at least Breckenridge) is a little behind when it comes to the internet, so only three of the 5 million churches in town have websites, and only one has easy to find service times. We picked Bethany Baptist because it seemed to have a 9am service, and a bunch of people were planning to do 3 gun practice this morning at 10am. Well neither of us set an alarm, and I woke up at 8:25, which is enough time to get me up and dressed and have breakfast made and eaten and out the door before 8:45, but I guess it wasn't quite enough time for Jesse. However, we were only 2 minutes late to what I thought was a 9am service, but was actually bible study. Long story short, we ended up going home for 20 minutes, and driving back at 10. Thankfully everyone pushed practice back to 11, so we didn't miss out on anything.
I'm glad we made it. I've never been good at church hunting. We tried once when we first moved to Portland, but we ended up staying at the first church we went to, because none of us wanted to prolong the search. I have gone to two other churches since we moved to Colton, but those were chosen strictly because of the people I knew who were already going, and my attendance didn't last long. So having to go to a new church, one that my father is not the pastor of, one where we don't have any friends, was a relatively new experience. At the beginning of the service, the man doing announcements (who I believe is the associate pastor, but I'm not certain) mentioned something about giving to some specific program, and Jesse leaned over to me and said "oh crap, they pass the plate here, don't they?" and I was taken back to the first memory that I have of being in church. Actually, I have three other early memories involving churches...one is getting a tambourine stuck on my head, one is climbing on the "rock wall" outside the old Elkton church, and the other is sticking olives on my fingers with Larry Hendrickson in the basement of the Lowell church, but those just happened at church, not during church. My first memory of a church service is at the church in Reedsport (I'm fairly certain we were sitting on the left side, which is odd for my family, but I can't be certain), and when they passed the offering plate, I tried to take the money out. I was about 4 years old and didn't know any better, but I was still confused and mortified down to my very core.
Thankfully our experience today was much less embarrassing. Everything that happened was long winded, but it was cut short at an hour, there were two little kids sitting next to us that kept waving to me, everyone seemed very nice, and the pastor was good at preaching from the bible, rather than going off on tangents and leaving everyone thinking "so...because Jesus said 'blessed are the poor in spirit', that means we should be vegetarians??" Of course, no pastor in Texas would tell you to be a vegetarian, but you get the picture. He was decently concise, had good illustrations, and only a little bit of the preacher voice. Apparently he and his wife were missionaries in Washington for a while, and did some work in hood river, so they could sympathize some with our culture shock. We also met the school nurse from north elementary school, and she told me that if you have any college at all you can be a substitute teacher, and they're in desperate need of subs right now. I guess they lost a bunch of teachers and had to hire all their subs. So I will probably try to figure out how to go about signing up to be a substitute elementary school teacher! She said it pays $50/day, which isn't astronomical, but it's not awful. That would definitely be an adventure...I have never experienced an elementary school classroom, especially not in Texas, but I should be able to handle faking it for a day at a time, right? I helped all the kiddos with their homework at Candy Lane all the time, and only once had to tell a 5th grader that I didn't know what to do. It'd be easy peasy!
Well anyway...we got home from church and people started showing up pretty quick, all in their matching colt jerseys that they wear to matches. It was cool to watch. I feel like I could do 3 gun, but not smoothly. I'm not super comfortable with shotguns, and the transitions would confuse me. So I stuck to score keeping and feeding people cookies. Apparently my cookies are good enough that Jesse threatened to start selling them, and Ryan said he would go broke. Honestly, I though they were a little, teeeeensy bit overdone, but I like super soft cookies. Jesse didn't do bad, coming in sixth out of ten, which is pretty good for having never done it before. They left most of the course up, so I'll have to try it sometime before I start teaching and don't have free evenings anymore.
Afrer that we went out on the boat and Jesse got to swallow a few gallons of Hubbard creek lake before figuring out how to wakeboard. It was a bit too choppy for my taste, so I decided to wait, but he and Ryan and Annie and Dave all gave it a go. Of course, with Dave wakeboarding, that just left Annie to drive, and she just learned yesterday. She did a pretty good job (I guess, I don't know much about it) except for when she turned around and straight into our own wake. I'm told it was a wall of water, four or five feet high that we plowed right through. I somehow managed to miss seeing it. I turned around just in time to get a face full of water, but it must have been a dusey, because it left a puddle of water on the canopy, and about six inches of standing water in the bow, where Annie had put Dave's chicken wings to keep them dry. That worked well. We had to take everything out of the boat when we got back to the shop and spread it all around so it can dry out. Thank goodness for the heat! It would probably take days in Oregon. The whole thing is carpeted. Who thought to put carpet in a boat? It snaps out, but still...it's like putting carpet in a bathroom. Just weird.
Anyway. That was our great Texas adventure for the day. Over and out.
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