Dearest Rachel –
It amazes me to think that once upon a time, our family thought nothing of showing up at church both in the morning and the evening. I don’t know if my folks ever suffered from the “Sunday Scaries,” as I hear tale of nowadays – and can totally relate to, even though I don’t have a Monday to dread anymore, and at the time I didn’t have such a snappy name for it – but if they did, especially to and from Sunday night services at church, they never gave any indication of it. Or maybe I just didn’t notice (which is probably the more likely case; kids have no clue what goes on outside of their visible range, and I don’t claim to have been any better, on the contrary).
Granted, I don’t think this was something you dealt with in your family; if nothing else, your folks seemed to view going to church at all something of a duty rather than something to enjoy being a part of. Once home from being there on Sunday morning, the rest of the day was free. Certainly, the amount of time we put in at ours (and this was long after our church abandoned Sunday evening services) was more than enough to get their eyebrows raised at our seemingly excessive participation therein, so that says something.
But as a rule, yeah, even we didn’t go to church on Sunday evening by the time we were married. The place was busy enough in the morning (and these days, I put in the whole morning in the booth already) that evenings seemed like overkill. Besides, there was Monday looming in the… well, not that much ‘distance’; certainly within sight.
But as it so happened, there was something planned last night. Not the usual sort of thing (although again, there is no ‘usual’ thing at that hour of that day), but a preparation for something in the near future. We’d had a drive of medical supplies to be taken down to Honduras for the Just One clinic (should be interesting to see if the place is actually up and running by now, rather than functioning out of the lower-level library), and the call went out for a group to show up and sort what had been received for shipping down there.
I hadn’t made plans to go and help out, because there had been some talk about the gang getting together at some point over the past weekend. But as those plans slowly began to unravel in real time, it seemed more and more like something that I ought to help out with; if nothing else, I half-wanted to see if my dream about teaching teachers was a real thing (far be it from me to disregard a Call™, if it was) or if my mind just made something up out of whole cloth to scare me when most of Halloween wouldn’t otherwise.
Interestingly, several of the girls (you might be able to guess which ones) actually expressed interest in helping out as well, and for a moment, I thought we might actually have a reduced get-together there; maybe we’d head out once the work was done and hang out for a bit. But while there were plenty of people there – and the process was completed in just a little more than half the time as was originally planned for as a result, leaving us with that much more free time, if we didn’t mind the dark – neither of them joined us. In fairness, I didn’t make the plan to go until around midday yesterday myself, so that can be excused. Besides, Erin had just been running a half-marathon in the morning; the fact that she expressed interest at all seemed a bit odd. I think she may have thought it was possible (and certainly necessary), but her body reminded her that she was mortal, after all.
Anyway, the task was simple, and not unlike one of the many sorting games that seem to be all the rage among Let’s Players online these days; unbox, unwrap and sort all the products by type (painkillers, vitamins, dental hygiene, eyeglasses, digestive aids, allergy medication) and category (children v adult strength, for instance) before filling boxes and bins as tightly as possible and getting them labeled for customs purposes and shipping.
The funny part was that, while we headed out to church to help out with this effort, we grabbed an early dinner (late lunch?) on the way. We hadn’t planned on them having pizza afterwards – and, quite honestly, we weren’t interested in what they had, even though I suppose it’s the sort of thing you do for these sorts of things; you ask for people to come out and help you move, you supply pizza. We keep forgetting that; which means we’d probably be lousy hosts if we ever asked anyone else to help us move (not that we ever really intend to do that). But pizza or not, we were there, we helped with what needed doing… as things should be. Not saying this for any sort of praise; just recounting the (unusual) events of the day, and leaving it at that.
Although, for what it’s worth, I did ask several of Maddie’s team about teaching, and they assured me that it was just my hyperactive imagination cooking up scenarios; they have no intention of superseding the Honduran school system. Which is a bit of a relief; I’m not expected to be there that much.
