Day 226 – Louisiana (by Jim)
The Events of Sunday, February 6, 2011
In Philippians chapter 4, Paul challenges Christians to seek out and affirm the good:
“Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” So that is what I try to do. In the case of the Alexandria Econolodge, the continental breakfast is worthy of praise. This may be the best hotel breakfast we’ve had on this trip: waffles, scrambled eggs, sausage patties, biscuits, gravy, grits, yogurt, bread (toast), cold cereal, coffee, tea, and fruit juices. It was a feast!
As author of this blog, I must honestly report that in most respects this hotel is unsatisfactory. The girls’ showerhead fell off entirely. Their sink light was out, the phone cord is broken, and their table leg was loose. Both of our showers drain very slowly. The painted wall art is quite nice: but two of the three pictures in our room are exactly the same!
I found that very few Alexandria churches have websites, and, of the few that did, none were within three miles of us. But I was excited about one we did find, Live Oak Community Church. Their website invited us to a 3:30 flag football game, followed by a 5:30 Super Bowl party on big screen TV. Both of these options interested me. Even more, their creativity and missionary zeal for the community impressed me. From the website photos, I judged them to be a multiethnic church with contemporary music, informal dress, and energetic staff led by Pastor Ken. Perfect!
We showered and dressed in plenty of time, departing at 10:25 for a 10:45 service. But then our journey shifted. Pam has just finished reading Alex Hailey’s Hotel, a behind-the-scenes look at the “hospitality” industry. She read that hotel burglaries are common and learned how hotels excuse themselves from responsibility for stolen items. Now, I had left our laptop open on the table in our room. So Pam started thinking about thieves and hackers taking our computer, hacking into our accounts, leaving us with terrible chaos. We were about a mile away from the hotel when she said she would be uneasy the whole morning about leaving our computer out where someone might find it. So we turned around and she went up to put the laptop away in a more secure place. A few minutes later, she came out carrying the laptop (and cord), with a look of amazement. She had found our room—and all the rooms on the hall—propped open. There was no cleaning crew in the vicinity, no signs of maintenance: just an open door, and our laptop sitting attractively on our table. She wisely decided that the hotel room was not a good place to leave a laptop.
Our next surprise awaited us when we arrived (according to our GPS) at the church. It was a large building but there were few cars parked and no people outside. Yes, we were a minute late, but usually there is some remnant of the congregation, the latecomers (like us), the wayward teenagers. No, it was very quiet. It comforted me to see the pastor’s name, Ken something-or-other, on the outdoor sign. We opened the front door and entered the foyer, but there were no ushers to greet us. So we opened the door to the sanctuary. I noticed a black boy and his mother in the back row, a large black man in white robes praying loudly at the pulpit, and a dozen other well dressed black churchgoers, the women in elaborate hats, seated in the audience. Something’s not right here, it slowly dawned on me. This is not the church we were seeking. It is not multiethnic, dress is not informal, it does not start at 10:45. We quickly retreated to the RV, laughing nervously at our mistake. Once out of earshot, the family filled me in on details they had seen, but I had missed: the church was named Bethel AME Church, not Live Oak Community Church; the photos of previous pastors in the foyer were all of black men; the boy in the back playing a GameBoy had looked at us as if we were aliens; his mother had looked up when we entered and mouthed the words, “Oh, my!”
Confused at our error, we tried to find Live Oak, but by the time we did, it was 11:00, and we did not relish the idea of arriving fifteen minutes late to strange church. So we drove on and parked in the empty parking lot of a movie theater. We decided to have a family Bible and prayer time. (We were glad to have the laptop with us because that is where we have the Mark Study notes.) That went quite well, and, when we finished, we prepared and ate lunch. It struck me that being in the RV allows us great flexibility for situations such as this.
We crossed the street and went shopping at Super Walmart for our Super Bowl dinner. Halfway across, Lindsey said, “This isn’t Walmart, this is Always!” After seven months, I thought she had noticed that Walmart store fronts have signs that say “Always Low Prices.” We wanted something quick and easy, so we could prepare and eat it in our rooms without having to wash dishes. Now, it is not often that we go grocery shopping together as a family, and rarely do we do so on a Sunday afternoon. This is why: it took us over an hour! Crazy! However, in the end, everyone had a microwaveable dinner, and we also bought some green peas (gotta have those vegetables!), sodas, and dessert.
The rest of the afternoon we spent in our rooms, reading, relaxing, and catching up on blogs, until about 5:00. Having two rooms turned out to be a great benefit for our evening of TV. Ben and I watched the Super Bowl. The ladies watched Super Bowl commercials, the end of Anne of Green Gables and America’s Funniest Videos, and parts of Airplane, Hardy Boys, Forrest Gump, Cars, and whatever else caught their eye when they were channel surfing around, trying to view the Super Bowl commercials, without ever having to actually watch the game.
At about 6:30, I put my dinner in the microwave to warm it up, and—ZAP—the power went out in the room. I opened the hall door just as Caitlin was opening hers. So both rooms had no power. I went down to the desk (I could have called, but who thinks to use a telephone during a power outage?) and asked for someone to help us. About five minutes later, the power went back on, and it stayed on the rest of the evening. We cooked and ate our Super Meals in front of the televisions. Ben and I agreed that the halftime show was atrocious (as usual), so we enjoyed an ESPN special on the Red Sox in the World Series. In my opinion, the football game itself left something to be desired. Both teams played hard, but they were sloppy: there were too many errors, too many missed passes, too many poor decisions. Yet it was an exciting game, close enough to keep us interested. Then we cleaned up…no, that’s not the right terminology: we threw away our dishes, returned to our rooms and went to bed.