Things I Love About My Church Family.....

my utterly beautiful soul-sistah lindsey.

It's Turkey Day!!! Well, almost. This evening all the adult leaders/volunteers/churchgoers from Rosedale Church gathered at a family's home for chili, yummy desserts, games, and loud, loud, loud fellowship. (I did attend, so the latter is almost a given.) Thirty+ adults and kids squeezed into a living room and kitchen oh-so-tight, kids crawling under tables and over chairs and into laps, people spilling over onto couches and windowsills, balancing bowls of chili on their knees and yelling across the room for someone to bring them a napkin or another bowl of chili or a homemade rootbeer, because they're stuck between the table and couch and can't get out. A ridiculous game of Catchphrase in which my team was royally spanked, and of course the line-by-line replay of Nacho Libre by yours truly et al. :)

I still am humbled and amazed by the people that surround me every Sunday morning and evening. Humbled because I feel I don't deserve a community of friends that accepts me so willingly, openly, without hesitation. Amazed that God brought me to them at just the right time in my life, in a city of 1 million+.

And of course, since it is Thanksgiving week, I thought of more I'm thankful for...

...for community - in that I have found myself, in under 6 months of discovering Rosedale, part of a family that genuinely loves and looks out for each other; a group of people from different backgrounds, different styles of worship, different stories of faith - who come together and worship the Lord Jesus as one.

...for a church family that is interested, above all else, in pursuing God's will in their own individual lives and in the direction of the church as a whole.

...for people that accept the crazy, loud, fun-loving side of me and are perhaps a little crazy themselves too....at times...:o)

...for a God who gave His followers the Church, so that we can experience the presence of Christ here on earth, His unconditional love, His compassion, His sense of humor, His arms of comfort during times of sorrow, His shouts of joy during times of excitement. His hands and feet, still touching and walking among those of us left here on earth.

Limbo, limbo, limbo...

Tonight I took a journey down memory lane and went to Skate World with the elementary kids from Rosedale Church. Imagine about 50 four- to ten-year olds who have been skating maybe once before in their lives, all stumbling, shuffling, falling, shrieking out on the cold floor of the skating rink, loud Christian rock and rap music videos being played out, projected onto the concrete back wall, and the adult volunteers trying desperately to avoid wiping out with the one or two kids who are clinging to their arms and legs like barnacles to the side of a whale.

I have many, many fond memories of going to Skate City in Chanute, taking kids from Cherry Street, going myself in my neon-green-and-hot-pink roller blades with gel wheels!!! and always wanting to be on the skate racing team....yeah I still get yelled at in the skating rink for going too fast...Skating always feels so freeing, just gliding along in circles, movin' to the music, following the disco ball lights with your feet, playing limbo, falling flat on your face, laughing, getting back up, skating backwards, and just moving.

These kids from Rosedale Church were so fun to take skating. Lots of them had never been before, and I have to admit, as long as the kid doesn't knock himself out, it's hilarious to watch them skate around the rink, legs wobbly, arms flailing out in an attempt to keep their balance, shrieking with laughter when they collide with each other or the wall - I only saw one kid actually come off the rink crying. And I've decided that my new favorite thing in the world is those Fisher Price toddler skates - the ones that don't really roll, just kinda chink-chink-chink across the floor, and you don't really have to worry about the kid falling too awful much.

Sooooo in closing - I love roller skating. I think I should take it up as my new hobby.....

And I'm going to a three-day medical missions conference this week in Louisville, Kentucky this week! Going with a bunch of friends from church and work, we're road-trippin' it up there and back, and it is gonna be the bomb. I am pumped. Of course we're leaving Thursday morning at 8 am....and I work Wednesday night, 7 pm - 7 am....so I will be either delirious or comatose or both by the time we get there Thursday afternoon....woop woop for medical missions!!!

Now do-si-do your partner round.....

Last night I had the first experience of my life with square dancing...

(don't they look like they're having fun???)

"Square dance is a folk dance with four couples (eight dancers) arranged in a square, with one couple on each side, beginning with Couple 1 facing away from the music and going counter-clockwise until getting to Couple 4. Couples 1 and 3 are known as the head couples, while Couples 2 and 4 are the side couples. Each dance begins and ends each sequence with "sets-in-order" in the square formation. The dance was first described in 17th century England but was also quite common in France and throughout Europe and bears a marked similarity to Scottish Country Dancing. It has become associated with the United States of America due to its historic development in that country. Nineteen U.S. states have designated it as their official state dance." (Wikipedia.com)


One of the guys from my church concocted a plan to take all the adult volunteers on a "fellowship night" to Raytown, MO to learn square dancing. I have to admit that although I love dancing, I was a little apprehensive about this. Mostly because,

a) I hate country music. I don't just mean, oh I don't like it very much; I mean I physically leave the room if a truly country song comes on. Yes I am prejudiced and I apologize and I give you permission to make fun of my favorite musical styles. I can handle a lil Hank Williams or Johnny Cash, mostly for its folk-music quality. But strains of Tim McGraw makes me want to vomit a lil in my mouth.

b) We were "requested" by Justin to wear plaid, cowboy boots and hats, or some other countrified apparatus to show our true affinity with - heck, I don't know, I guess the square dancers. I don't own plaid. Correction - I own one shirt with a very faint plaid-resembling pattern. No boots, no hat. I wore a black shirt and trouser jeans with ballet slippers and my amazing red-patterned scarf/shawl from Kassala, Sudan. I know, I'm such a bad sport.

c) Square dancing is a calling dance - meaning, they have a guy up front who calls out different moves and you're expected to immediately start moving in a specific pattern. I have serious problems with verbal directions - a big reason why I no longer do casino rueda salsa. Because when you mess up, you mess up the entire group of people dancing, and they start getting peeved looks on their faces, your partner furrows his brow and says, Ok, let's get it right now, and the whole situation is just awkward...

We finally arrived at the church after a false start at a different one (did we really think a church with a building and people that young would have square dancing???), and were immediately plunged into huge hoola-hoop-sized "fruffly" skirts, golden bloomers, panty-hose-enclosed legs ending in sturdy black orthopedic shoes, old men with hair slicked back with Aussie gel, scattered styrofoam cups stained with coffee and old pink lipstick, Wrangler pearl-snap mens' shirts stretched taut over potbellies, tappin' your toe, do-si-do, plain ol' good clean country fun.

I honestly don't know who had more fun - the eleven "teenagers" staring at the caller, trying to listen intently to the dance moves called out, clenching tightly the hand of whatever poor senior citizen was recruited to yank them through each dance move; or the gray-haired woman or man saying, Now go, that way, hold your hand out, stop, pass through, bow to your corner, no this way, no stay! Through half the dance, all of us collapsed in laughter, we at the fact we were so incompetent in our dancing skills and unable to keep a square "square", the older folks at the antics of those youngsters who would periodically break out a hip hop move or a disco hand when the beat suddenly struck us and we simply did whatever felt natural to us - which is certainly not to promenade or make a half-turn star.

All of us "teenagers" - that's what they kept calling us, teenagers, although none of us are under 21, but I suppose that when you're 75, anything under 30 looks like a high schooler to you! - all of us teenagers expressed amazement that by 10 pm, we were ready to keel over from exhaustion, while the older folks kept on dancing, dancing, dancing. Of course when you drink coffee constantly for the first 2 hours, you can handle pretty much anything that comes your way!

Over and over before we left, I heard from the older folks, You bring so much life to our dancing! And I would stop, and look over the room - on average, 50 years' difference between the people now holding each others' hands, laughing as they share a hilarious blunder on the younger's part. Really, we come from different worlds - the America they experienced and grew up in has now transformed into a totally different country. Some of those people may not even live to see the next President inaugerated. Yet what a beautiful thing when those differences are blurred and you discover that you share something with the grey-haired, wrinkly, smiling, bobbing lady next to you; a love of life.