Chicken Drop Sunday

I have given birth twice. And once I did it without the benefit of drugs. So I know what childbirth is like. And I have to say that giving birth is a piece of cake compared to writing a book. I just got home from dropping off the final final final draft at the publisher. I understand that there will still be a final final final final draft to work on but it will be the real honest to God “last word.” Hopefully, there will be plenty of time for me to have actual physical things to sell people to give as Christmas presents. “Plenty of time” in this case means before midnight on Dec 24th. You should plan to reserve about 16 bucks to get a copy. And we plan to have a place here on the blog where you can order an autographed copy and charge it on Pay Pal. I know my buddy Jason Gambel and everybody else at Dorchester Presbyterian in South Carolina will want their own copy of the story of the Great BBQ Cookoff at the Pearlington PDA camp.

I have been instructed to push the book here on my blog. So, now I have an emergency “Out” anytime I can’t think of anything new to say here. I’ll just draw on something from the book.

First, let me say that the book is hopefully a combination of serious reflection and funny stories. Kind of like what I post here. Some of it I hope is funny and some of it I hope will make you think.

Let me give you one of my favorite stories today. The night I learned about Chicken Drop Sunday.

It was January of 2007. I was having a tough time and felt like any moment I could crash going around the learning curve trying to get a handle on how to manage a hurricane recovery camp. Out of the blue my daughter sent me a card in the mail that perked me up. And this is where the story picks up:

The other thing that lifted me out of the doldrums was a group of volunteers God sent me that week. They were a small group, and I knew one of the guys from my solo trip in February, the year before. Bill Smith was our water guru, and he was the one who designed the water treatment system. I was really glad to see him, because we had failed our water test a month before and had to warn volunteers against drinking the water in camp. Because they were the only group in camp that week and only numbered five people, we just ate our meals right there in the kitchen around the prep table. It was very homey.

First you need to remember that we were in Mississippi. Deep, rural Mississippi. The closest place-- well, the only place--in town to get a meal outside your own kitchen was the bar up on the highway. It’s called Turtle Landing and it’s a very laid-back place where you can have a burger and a beer out on the landing and watch the wildlife. I hear you can feed the turtles and an occasional alligator from the dock. They don’t serve any of that fancy stuff like wine, and the place is usually full of cigarette smoke. On nights like Sunday’s Super Bowl it was only natural that the Pittsford, New York group wanted to visit Turtle Landing to watch the New York Giants play.

They came back to camp with an explanation of a sign Turtle Landing had outside for months that proclaims Sundays are “Chicken Drop” night. All the times I passed the sign I just assumed this meant some kind of deep fried chicken meal they sold on Sundays. Oh, no. Nothing could be further from the truth.

“Chicken Drop” is a game. The Pittsford team didn’t actually see it played but they got an explanation : they have an enclosed pen with a grid marked on the floor. Inside each square is a number. You pay for a number. At the prescribed moment they put the chicken into the pen while everyone sits and enjoys their beer watching it walk around inside the pen. If the chicken poops into the square you chose, you win and get the prize money. I’m not sure if the bar keeps part of the pot or if the winner gets it all. But it set the church from Pittsford to thinking.

They decided it would make a dandy fund-raiser for mission trips to Mississippi. They started talking about how they could do this. I’m still not totally sure how serious they are about it, but the conversation was the perfect way to unwind from the day.

First, they had to discuss if owning chickens was legal in Pittsford and how they could find one. And did this constitute cruelty to animals? No, they decided, since pooping is a perfectly healthy and normal thing for a chicken to do. Then, could they do this inside the church or outside? If outside, the dates for the Drop would have to wait until winter was passed. Nobody wanted the poor pooping chicken to have to walk around in the cold. Everyone was interested in how fast the chicken would produce a winner, but no one knew much about the bowel habits of chickens. I suspect it takes a while and that the real goal of the game is drinking a lot of beer.

Then, where else could the conversation go after that but forming a committee? And, no name would do but the obvious: The Chicken Shit Committee. Each person at the table, including myself, decided we had served on this committee in the past and could probably chair the committee ourselves simply through our vast experience. That was the end of that, and we all went to bed.

Listening to the Leaves

I had just about the best week you could imagine last week. And that’s even considering the Exploding Quiche.

I spent a lot of time on the road last week; it seemed like I drove a couple of hours every day and burned up about three tanks of gas just going back and forth to civilization. But every trip was for something unique and exciting. I went to Garland for a gathering of young adults to talk about starting a group from several different churches. I went to a meeting in Longview to help plan a Women’s Retreat based on the way we do ours at the Garland church. Probably the most interesting field trip of the week was meeting a friend for lunch who gave me a tour of Hockaday School in Dallas, where she works. Hockaday is a very exclusive private school for girls. The words “private” and “exclusive” tell you why I’ve never been inside the gates and I felt a little like Dorothy entering Oz. However, the lunch with my friend was even better. Lunches with friends top just about any event.

That will explain how great it was to have two of the most peaceful women I know came out for lunch on Friday. We spent a lot of time sitting outdoors just listening to the leaves fall. Yes, leaves make a sound when they fall. If you get quiet enough you can hear each individual leaf as it hits the ground then scrapes against the dirt as it settles down for winter. We went for a walk in the woods and I noticed that the air now has that distinctive smell that you get only in the autumn when the oak leaves change color and dry out then stiffen and float through the air as they leave the tree. Pine needles and cedar have their own unique smell in summer when the heat releases their oils. The two events smell very different but heavenly in their own way.

We sat outside on the deck for a long time. It’s unusual for me to sit still and I asked Traci and Nancy, “Are ya’ll bored or just being peaceful?” I figure a good hostess checks things like that. They assured me they were enjoying the quiet.

Someone spotted a hawk in a tree across the creek. The way it sat on the tree branch was almost like it was showing off for us. We even suggested that we could tell more about the bird if he would show us his profile. A few minutes later, almost like he had heard us, he turned his head. I went into the house and got the binoculars and a couple of bird books. For the next hour, we watched it fly from tree to tree encircling us, finally ending up in the original tree.

I have to admit that without good friends to sit with I never would have sat still long enough to witness it all. I am grateful to them for their visit--it gave me a reason to be still in my own backyard and watch what God sends to me every day. And I had to send God a little prayer of apology for wasting such a gift.

I had to feel some regret, however, that Traci and Nancy missed the Quiche Explosion because it was truly remarkable. The recipe called for me to pre-bake the pie crust. When the crust was cooked to a golden brown I set the glass pie plate on the top of the stove to cool. Then, ever the multi-tasker, I filled a pan with water for the tea and turned on a burner to heat the water. I went into the living room to check email while the water for the tea heated. I figured I would fill and bake the quiche later. But in the midst of email there was a loud “POW!” followed by the distinctive sound of a zillion glass shards landing on every surface in my kitchen: counter tops, window sill, stove, sink, floor—you get the picture. Then smoke filled the house.

Without setting foot in my kitchen I knew immediately what had happened. I had turned on the wrong burner and the heat under the supposedly “cooling” pie shell had caused the glass pie plate to shatter. Then the pie crust had settled on the bare burner and instantly burned to a crisp. I know these things, sadly, through vast experience. When I got to the kitchen there was a perfectly round but black pie crust settled on the burner and sort of lapping over the edges like a Salvador Dali painting. And, of course, glass was everywhere.

This gave me a new hobby. For the next few months I'll be picking up glass shards from every surface of my kitchen. My granddaughters may never be allowed to go barefoot in my house again. In the meantime, I still had to make another quiche. I didn’t pre-bake the pie crust for this one, though. I’ve decided that life is too short to waste on stuff like that, especially when you factor in the time to clean up after dumb mistakes.

Maybe I should stick to listening to the leaves.

Halloween Report 2009

This was not your grandmother’s Halloween. I have somehow escaped the annual candy-o-rama the last couple of years so I was excited to be able to tag along with them this year. But found out they don’t go door-to-door anymore. They do “Trunk or Treat” now. Emily started taking them to a friend’s church parking lot where people pass out candy from the trunks of cars. Huh?

When I was a kid the easiest costume was the Lone Ranger because all it required was a black mask. The rest of the costume was usually hanging right there in the closet. I can’t remember any other costume. And it’s entirely possible that I wore the same one every year. I’m like that.

Then came the wait for it to get dark. There was no wait longer than waiting for dark on Halloween. Once we finally took off we wouldn’t come home until the paper grocery sack was too heavy to carry.

Then when my girls were Trick or Treating I think I made a couple of costumes but again it was nothing elaborate. I do remember the first Halloween costume for each girl was always as a ghost because you can use a pillowcase when they’re little.

You can tell I’ve never been much on dressing up. When I worked at the bank they tried to have costumes a couple of times and I had a good friend who was almost fully grown when she was still in the fifth grade. She loaned me her Girl Scout uniform and it fit me perfectly. I think I wore that one for two years in a row. But my enthusiasm for dressing up at work dissolved the year the geniuses in charge of things decided to lay off a huge chunk of personnel on October 31st . There is no sight more pathetic than someone cleaning out their desk or madly copying their resume while dressed as a Martian. I’ll never forget the way my friend’s antennae bobbed as she was cleaning out her desk. That’s just wrong to do to folks.

I’m not sure we ever dressed up for Halloween again. In retrospect, it’s pretty dumb to have a bank lobby full of employees dressed in costumes when a robber could walk up in a mask and clean out the vault and leave without looking out of place.

The grands out-did themselves this year with their costumes.
Essie was the girl from Mythbusters. This involved coloring her hair and wearing safety goggles. Aunt Elizabeth made her a shirt with “Mythbusters” emblazoned diagonally (it’s a long word on a small chest) across a black shirt.



Sarah went as “the world’s worst doctor.” All she needed was scrubs, surgical mask and lots of fake blood splattered everywhere. A far cry from wearing a Lone Ranger mask every year.

I was still not sure about Trick or Treating from car trunk to car trunk. But it didn’t take me long to be convinced this was the best idea since sliced bread. Besides candy dispensed from the artfully decorated trunks by church members (good Christian people you could trust to handle your grandchild’s health) there was more entertainment than I’ve seen at a lot of state fairs.

There were three or four tables set up to sell food: BBQ, hamburgers, hotdogs, French fries, nachos, cotton candy….you name it and they had it. Then there was a petting zoo with baby goats and ducks and other baby animals I can’t remember. The fire department had brought a couple of their fire trucks to let kids climb on. A pony ride. A cake walk. A sound system blaring out music. I’m afraid it was so loud I couldn’t really make out the music but I had a feeling it was good clean Christian songs. Then surrounding the whole thing like a giant vinyl curtain were at least eight bounce houses. Maybe more. Let me say that again: there were lots and lots of bounce houses. Kid Heaven.

As a matter of fact, the kids were having so much fun that the candy took a back seat. The adults ended up sitting under a tree eating nachos and babysitting the candy while the girls played.

Elizabeth and Emily were astonished when I went through the girls’ candy baskets to check for the good stuff and helped myself to a Tootsie Roll. Then an Almond Joy. Apparently they never knew I did this to their candy every year after they went to sleep. Kids don’t appreciate good candy. They’ll eat anything in case you haven’t noticed. Besides, they didn’t need to eat all that candy. I thought of it as a kind of nutritional supervision and part of being a good mother to separate out some of their candy. I always kept a secret stash of the good stuff on top of our refrigerator. It would sometimes last me until Christmas when the stocking candy arrived. Which would last until Valentines Day. Then Easter.

Coming on the heels of last week’s post about the new non-denominational churches I must report that it was one of these new congregations who hosted this Halloween extravaganza. The name of the church is “Church in the City.” They have a website. Emily chose this event for the girl’s Halloween about three years ago when a co-worker who worships there told her about it. Emily also attended one Sunday when Tracy’s newly adopted son was dedicated. Emily loves their worship style. And the congregation is “diverse.” That was easy to say since Tracy is black and the people working the party were an assortment of colors. But Tracy leaned forward and re-emphacized, “REALLY diverse.” Like maybe race wasn’t the only difference in their members. I started imagining gays, ex-cons, bikers, strippers, murderers, maybe even a few backsliding Baptists.

But this church is huge and growing. They have a big new building. An active congregation. What are they doing right that the withering up old mainstream churches aren’t? I have a feeling the eight bounce houses are a clue.

The Church Reformed, Always Emerging

It’s plain spooky sometimes when I catch God messing in my business. Yesterday I caught her trying to tell me what I should write about on this week’s blog.

I’ve been “weeding” the book shelves. I decided to paint behind the entertainment center last week and everything ended up in several giant piles throughout the living room. I decided many things will have to go and went into the “Keep? Throw?” exercise.

And there in the pile of books I’ve had laying around for longer than I want you to know about is The Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. Stephen Cottingham told me years ago this book was a “must read” so I got a copy but somehow got sidetracked. So I opened it up sitting there in the middle of the living room and found it just chock-full of pithy observations that mirror a curious thought that’s been bumping around in my brain lately. I’m going to take this as a sign that the Master of the Universe approves of what I am thinking and wants you to hear me out.

What if we’re doing Church wrong? What if we’re wasting valuable time on petty things when there are more important things for us to be doing? I find myself weary of the small issues we debate sometimes. We spend countless amounts of words, ink, time and energy debating who we should ordain to be our leaders in the church instead of using the words and energy to help feed the hungry or heal those who hurt. I keep thinking God has much bigger fish to fry and must be frustrated with us. Somewhere on earth today people will meet to discuss decorations for their church for the upcoming holiday to celebrate Jesus when they should be outside where people slept in the rain last night. We talk a lot more than we “do” because the stuff Jesus wants us to “do” is hard and we’d rather change the subject.

We are about to celebrate the Protestant Reformation come November 1st. “All Hallows E’en” was the day before All Saints Day when Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the Wittenberg Church doors, beginning the Protestant Reformation. But we’ve fallen into thinking the Reformation was one single event that has passed and is over. But the motto of the Presbyterian Church translated from Latin reads “The Church Reformed, Always Reforming.” Have we forgotten the “Always Reforming” part?

There is a church movement afoot called The Emerging Church. My pastor and parish associate are both very interested in this. I pretended to understand what they were talking about for about a year until I finally had to ask what this was all about. Near as I can figure it, it’s just an extension of the reformation. God is not through with us.

Thomas Jefferson often announced that he thought it would be healthy for our country to have a revolution every generation or so. Just to keep us on our toes, it seemed. Would this be good for the church? Or have we put God in a box and told her to sit there and we would take care of everything else?

Here’s an example of what Rob Bell says that caught my imagination: “…the Christian faith is alive only when it is listening, morphing, innovating, letting go of whatever has gotten in the way of Jesus and embracing whatever will help us to be more and more the people God wants us to be.” On another page he says, “We must keep reforming the way the Christian faith is defined, lived and explained.”

What if God doesn’t care a bit how we run the church? What if God doesn’t even care if we have a church? Now that I think of it, Jesus didn’t utter a word about forming a church in his name after he was gone. He didn’t tell us to wear certain colors for different seasons, didn’t even suggest seasons or Easters and Christmases. Nor any organized efforts on his behalf.

Mostly, he just told us to be nice to each other; to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and heal the sick. He was very vague on details. Nothing about committees or ecclesiastica.

There is a small movement growing to get away from denominations. I’m seeing more and more non-denominational churches. And sometimes they don’t even call themselves a church; it’s labeled a “community” instead. There are even places where people meet in houses now instead of church buildings. And I have to say that sure would cut down on a lot of expenses. I sometimes even wonder if I took the money we gave to the church and just bought food for the homeless would that be a better deal?

I’ve grown to understand that things are really easier than I ever thought. Dangerously easy. Jesus told us all we have to do is love one another. If I follow Matthew 25 and think it might be my job to feed the hungry all I have to do is do it. I even started to suggest that my church set up a table of coffee and doughnuts on the sidewalk outside. Then I realized it wasn’t fear of failure that stopped me. It was fear of success.

And that’s kind of where I am now. Reforming. Emerging. Growing. But still afraid. Maybe that’s why I like someone to sit beside me on that pew.

PS: I woke up early Wednesday morning because I realized I had spelled Wittenberg wrong. Things like that keep me awake at night. I already had an email from Heather Dungey, one of the Young Adult Volunteers I served with in PDA. She writes with her own book suggestions:

"I haven't read Velvet Elvis (but perhaps I should) but if I may add to your already-long list of must-reads: When Helping Hurts: How to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor and ourselves.; by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. And Churches that Make a Difference, by Sider, Olson & Unruh. I think they pose some very good, Biblical and practical answers as to what the church may be doing wrong and what we should be doing differently."

Heather is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. She was hired away from PDA to work at one of the churches I'm talking about. It's Presbyterian but I think not aligned with PC(USA), making it essentially non-denominational. They haven't been bogged down with a lot of rules and regulations or office politics. They just quietly rebuilt houses. I was very impressed with the support their congregation gave to Katrina folks and what they were able to accomplish and all of it done in the Big Dude's name.

The Witches of Willow Lake

Now the story can be told.

About 15 years ago my friend Linda suggested to me that it would be really cool to make care packages for the college kids in our church. I think what gave Linda the idea was that she was receiving care packages from her “home” church back in Missouri because she was going to seminary and she knew how good it felt to get a package . That, plus the fact that her own kid was about to go into college and she wanted to get his bases covered. We decided to do it around All Saints Day with a Halloween theme. By the end of October the glow of being in college has worn off and you start thinking about home.

We would typically gather at Ann’s house because she lived on a private lake on the edge of one of Garland’s suburbs. Until I moved out here to the boondocks, it was the only house in our group that was close to being in “the country.” This was important because one of our favorite parts of gathering together was a giant bonfire we would have. Once the boxes were assembled we would eat a chili dog and go outside and have a big old bonfire.

Charlie and Ann would save up any brush or timber they cut on their five acres over the preceding year and create a gigantic pile of wood for our fire. I’m not sure Texas A&M’s annual bonfire could beat ours. One year I remember we had a torrential thunderstorm that night. We ended up on the balcony outside Ann and Charlie’s bedroom watching the storm. I have never seen lightning like this in my life. It was pink and travelled sideways. It was so remarkable, in fact that the newspapers and everybody in church the next day were talking about the pink lightning that travelled sideways. But even better than the lightning was the fire. It was so big and so hot that this torrential rain couldn’t put it out. Once the storm passed we looked down and noticed the fire was still glowing red. The flames flickered and returned to life. Our fire had battled the rain and won.

Sitting around that fire we would have some of the greatest conversations I’ve ever been part of. The group of women who gathered changed over time but it was always the best conversationalists I know. Early on I decided we could travel the alphabet to find topics for our evening. We started with A and advanced to the next letter every year. As if we might possibly run out of things to talk about. One great conversation, for example, was the C year when we explored the question: “If Jesus had served Girl Scout cookies at the last supper what flavor would he have used?” We had us some great times talking around those bonfires. Except for the year the cops came.

That year the pile of brush waiting for the All Saints bonfire ended up next to three new peach trees. Once Ann realized how close our bonfire would be to the trees she wetted down some bed sheets and draped them over the trees to keep them from catching fire. We lit our fire and sat back to solve a couple of the world’s problems. We were about half-way to the Nobel Peace prize when Charlie came down to the fire laughing his head off. The neighbors across the lake had sent the police to the house because there were some people “doing satanic rituals” at his house. I’m sure the white sheets on the peach trees didn’t help our case any. He told us he reported to the cops that we were just a bunch of church ladies and were “probably sitting around talking about the bible.”

Which, in fact, we were—in our own special way. I think this was our “H” year and we were talking about “Will Hitler get to heaven?” It might have been, “Did Jesus have a sense of humor?” But I think that one could have been the J year because now that I think of it the question was “Did Jesus tell jokes?” I remember we decided the answer was “yes” on the sense of humor. I think the jury is still out on Hitler. Most likely we gave thanks that it wasn’t our decision to make.

After that year we dubbed ourselves the Witches of Willow Lake and for the next few years our celebrations included witches hats in addition to chili dogs, care packages and conversations. And Ann started calling the fire department and getting permission for the bonfire.

We also became the best kept secret in Garland, Texas. For a few years I sent the boxes using my company’s UPS account and the kids had absolutely no way of knowing where the boxes came from. But eventually they checked with friends and figured out the church was the common denominator. I even overheard one teenager telling a new kid that when they got to college everybody got a care package at Halloween. After I quit working at the place with the UPS account the boxes would go out through the mail with only the church’s return address. But we were not an official function of the church. We were Secret Angels, albeit angels who wore witches hats and danced around bonfires on Halloween night.

About eight years into the tradition I was at a joint meeting of the session and the diaconate, the two governing bodies of our congregation. All the leaders were in one room, representing every committee in our church. We were doing some planning for the coming year. Someone said something about the care packages for the college kids. Someone else asked, “Yeah, whose committee does that?” Everyone in the room looked at each other in expectation. Membership said they didn’t do it. Christian Education said it wasn’t them. We had every single committee of the church sitting in a giant circle and no one knew who had been doing the boxes for the college kids. They had a hard time wrapping their minds around the idea that something was happening outside of a committee; there was a ministry they didn’t supervise, didn’t have to worry about and didn’t control. It still makes me laugh to remember that moment. To this day, no one outside the witches knows exactly who was behind the boxes.

A few years ago about half of the group, including Ann, moved away and the effort started wilting. When we saw the tradition of the anonymous packages dying off we knew we had to give it a new life and invited a committee to take it over. We're still going to try to keep it relatively secret. And here I go blabbing it all over the internet. Maybe the kids won't read this.

The important thing is that the college kids will again receive a care package around Halloween after some off-years. Charlie called me last week to read an article in his newspaper that reminded him of our gatherings. But I still miss those years of friends and the bonfires.

Ministries

Forgive me for being a little late today. Beaven is on the Texas Coast at one of the PDA camps working on hurricane relief. I’m staying home for a change to keep the dogs company. We just couldn’t send them off again after the three weeks we were gone. Plus our main babysitter, Emily, went with him. But besides babysitting the dogs I’m enjoying the peace and quiet. I’ve turned off the TV and every computer I can find, anything that makes the slightest noise. I love the quiet in the house and being able to hear the sounds of the outdoors. I may just go unplug the refrigerator.

Briefly, here is the last thing I have to say about our three weeks in Guatemala:

One of the best things about travelling to places that interest you is the cool people you get to hang around with. It’s the whole Birds of a Feather Flock Together thing. And I always enjoy the birds that flock with me when I travel. We met three or four people in job “transitions.” This was mostly the effects of the economy-- a lot found themselves between jobs and decided now was the time to follow their dream of learning Spanish. We met a recent law school grad who was waiting out the bar exam results and decided since she wanted to specialize in immigration issues she’d better know Spanish. One of our other new friends holds a normal job but harbors an interest in the Mayan Quiche language. So she took a couple weeks of vacation time and came to study at one of the only schools to teach Quiche. Where else would I find somebody who reads novels in Spanish just for the heck of it? Then there were the college or post college students.

All of these people were great for conversation but also injected energy into our surroundings. As tiring as our studies made us, our lives we were always energized by the people around us.

Now, the thing I really wanted to talk about today is all the small talents people have, the tiny things no one even thinks about much but that I’ve decided fall into the category of a “ministry.”

Frederick Buechner once wrote that a “vocation” is the place where your greatest joy meets the world’s greatest need.

A couple of weeks ago Sarah showed up at church with “bad hair” and that is putting it mildly. I think there had been some kind of hairbrush crisis at the house and her grandfather just brought her to church with wet and tangled hair. Plus her hair is so long now that her arms are too short to run a brush the entire length of the hair. I don’t carry a hairbrush because you may have noticed I really don’t care what my own hair looks like. I wasn’t too worried because I knew Emily kept a hairbrush in the Acolyte room. Except that horrible day it was gone. Panic time.

That’s when I thought of Ila Hitt. I’ve know for a while now that Ila routinely brushes the hair of a girl in our church whose mother is chronically ill and can’t do it herself. And we all know how much help a father is with little girls. Ila is one of those women who should have had girls but got a boy instead. That’s one of the things I really think God should put more thought into and I intend to address this situation once I get a face-to-face meeting with the Creator. In the meantime, Ila gets her little girl “fix” at church. It’s a win-win situation.

When I emailed her profuse thanks for her help with Sarah that day she told me where she stashes her hairbrush. I won’t tell you because you would probably go use it and not put it back where it goes and the next time somebody needed a hairbrush it would be gone. The Hairbrush Stash is kind of like good restaurants, you don’t want everybody knowing about them or it will ruin it for the rest of us.

What Ila has found is a very unique but necessary ministry. Brushing hair certainly isn’t the world’s greatest need but it sure helps some people. Once I started thinking this way I found ministry all around our church.

For all her hair problems, Sarah has decided she can help keep the pews well-stocked with pencils. Lord knows where they go, you wouldn’t think of accusing someone of stealing in church of all places but whenever I need a pencil the little pencil holder is empty. Sarah is the perfect person for this job. She loves to run the electric pencil sharpener and is the only person I know who can actually walk through the pews instead of scooching sideways because their butt is too big.

I call my own ministry “the blessing of the cars.” About a year ago I noticed one of our youth showed up for church in a brand new red pickup. Red, for goodness sakes. Just the thought of a red pickup in the hands of a teenager scares me to death. Without putting too much thought to it I went up to Matt and asked him if he’d had that truck blessed. He gave me that look. I grabbed him by the shoulder with one hand, lay the other hand on the truck and prayed my guts out for safety, sanity, sobriety and speed control. It wasn’t a long prayer-about two sentences—but heartfelt. On the way back into the church I asked him if I’d ever told him the story of the time I got a speeding ticket on the way home from a Defensive Driving class.

Last Sunday I blessed two more cars. Nowadays with facebook you get a very clear picture of the amount of testosterone behind the wheel of a brand new car. So I troll facebook and catch the guys on the parking lot.

It’s a ministry.

Montericco

The weekend after the fair one of the travel agencies in town was offering a trip to the Pacific coast of Guatemala to a small beach town called Montericco and what is called the "best beach in Guatemala." This was before I understood my nota bene at the first of this account, i.e. that sometimes Guatemala “over-represents” itself. What we found was what is called a “black sand beach,” one formed from volcanic activity. It’s not really black, more of a gray, actually but I think they call it that so you won’t be shocked when you see it. It’s like every other sandy beach in every respect. In fact, it really is beautiful and I have to say more beautiful than the beaches of the Texas Gulf Coast. The sand is immaculate and loose, not compacted into something resembling concrete like a lot of the Texas beaches. There's no seaweed or driftwood littering the beach, no plastic trash, no dead fish, no shells even. Nothing but sand and rip currents.

The dangerous undertow was publicized in the gringo travel books well enough that nobody ventured into the water except locals. I know the part about the undertow is true because I saw the video; one of my fellow students was just standing at the water’s edge with the ocean to her back while having her picture taken when a huge wave came ashore, knocked her down and sucked her out to sea. It took five lifeguards to save her from drowning. (OK, she is a very good-looking chick and maybe all five weren’t necessary but she really was drowning and she barfed up a stomach full of saltwater to prove it.)

But the thing I noticed about this beach is that there was nothing in the ocean as far as you could see from the left horizon to the right horizon until the sea met the sky. Nothing. No oil derricks. No oil refineries. No ships. Not even a small fishing boat. Nada.Only water and sky as far as you could see. I sifted back through my memories and can’t remember ever in my life seeing a beach without something in the water off in the distance. Never a beach without lights in the distance after dark. A beach left just the way God had made it. There’s something to be said for undeveloped countries. They are, well, undeveloped. Chalk one up for God.

But before I was able to appreciate the beauty of nature Beaven and I had to face a couple of nasty little problems. It was hot as hell and even though the travel agency included the cost of the hotel room in our price, they neglected to mention that air-conditioning was an extra you had to pay for yourself. The weather in Xela was similar to San Francisco and other high-altitude cities: cool during the day and extra cool at night. The most we ever needed was a light jacket for the cool. But the minute we got off the bus at Montericco it was just like every other beach: hot and humid. Sweaty, stiffling hot.

And Beaven and I were also still learning that if you had 200 Quetzals in your billfold you were not rich. At the exchange rate that translated to a little over twenty dollars, the cost to add air-conditioning to the room. And that was when we discovered the only ATM in town was broken. Right after that, we remembered the one and only time we had tried to use our credit card, the card was denied. We assumed at the time it was because the card was being used in Guatemala and the credit card people were protecting us from a possible theft. We chastised ourselves for a bit until it sunk in that we had no way to get money. We counted our funds and came up with the conclusion that we could afford either to have AC added to our room or eat our next three meals at restaurants, but not both.

It was a very sobering choice and a first for us. We may have been fairly broke early in our marriage but we never were overwhelmed, hot, hungry and broke all at the same time. We thought about it for a while and, of course, the longer we thought, the hotter it got so we chose the air-conditioning. We ate as cheap as we could for dinner and then some kind of miracle happened. Every time we counted our money there was more than the last time. We ended up with money left over when the weekend was done.

Sunday morning we went for a walk and found the place full of military guys. With guns. In fatigues. Standing guard everywhere in town. I had long ago gotten used to seeing armed guards in stores, fast food franchises and in front of banks. But this was something far more than anything I’d ever seen. We decided to tell ourselves that this was some kind of military training exercise as opposed to the idea that the Russians had landed. And we had absolutely no access to the outside world; as far as we knew they could have. We sat outside in a cute little restaurant that overlooked the beach enjoying our inexpensive little breakfast and saw more army guys appear. Then somebody told us the President of Guatemala was visiting today. Sure enough, here came a small group of men with one gray haired dude in the middle. They mingled with the life guards and talked to everyone, then left and gradually the military presence disappeared. Go figure. Nobody seemed to know what he was doing there.

But the best part of the weekend was Saturday night and I missed the whole thing. The travel agency offered a trip to watch the Ridley sea turtles swim ashore at nightfall and lay their eggs. This was the same travel agency that booked us into a hotel where air-conditioning was an additional option. Once the guide cautioned us that he couldn’t “promise” that we would actually see a turtle I counted myself out. I had figured out to read between the lines. I was ready for some peace and quiet (especially now that the room had cooled off) and thought reading a book would be more interesting than wandering around on the beach in the dark looking for turtles that most likely would not show up.

Well, boy, was I wrong. Beaven came back a couple of hours later and told me they had seen one swim ashore. She wasn’t very far from the water when she started digging a hole and immediately started laying eggs—just like you see on TV.

The part that wasn’t much like TV was the local guy who snatched the eggs out of the nest as soon as she laid them. And here is the delicate part of the story, the tradeoff with the ecotourism industry in poor countries. In some ways the locals who take the eggs help keep the eggs safe, they don't wash out to sea; they incubate the eggs and insure every egg hatches into a healthy turtle. Then they sell the baby turtles to tourists to release back to the sea. Everybody is happy: the local economy gets a boost and the tourist feels good. Except that it can take up to a week between hatching and release, during which time the baby turtles swim in a circle in a tub of sea water. They are exhausted by the time they get released, not the best condition to swim into the ocean when you're just a baby.

Beaven said the mother laid about 20 eggs, all of which were taken away. She covered up what she thought was a clutch of eggs then turned around and walked back to the water and swam off.

That’s about the last story of our trip. We’ll see what the next week brings. We had the grandkids over for the weekend and I am now a Monopoly expert even though I get bored quickly with board games. I finally got out a calculator to figure the Return on Investment for the various properties. I always knew the closer you get to Boardwalk and Park Place, the pricier the property and the higher the rent. But what I never realized is that the cheap properties like Baltic Ave. have only a 3% ROI where Boardwalk’s is closer to 9%. I have got to get a life.