Mississippi Trip – Thursday Cont'd

As promised, there's the afternoon and evening of our Thanksgiving Day in Mississippi...

So, we got back to the work camp at about 1 starving and ready for lunch. Silly me, I again hadn't considered it was Thanksgiving. So, what do you do during a church led service project but have a full communion service to really remember the sacrifice Jesus made for each of us. Honestly, this started and I couldn't help but groan a little. In the beginning I at least hoped that it would be a relatively quick service.

Well, God worked his magic and made sure it was even longer than some Sunday morning services (there are some services where Rob just goes on and on, but it would be rude to mention that here, right?). We had a couple songs, a good sermon (that time when someone gets up and talks) and a decent communion.

What really did make me see God's hand in this was with Communion and Malik. They were preparing for communion and this guy a row down from me looks around kind of lost and with some real questions on his face. So I hopped down a few steps and chatted with him. He just wasn't familiar with an Episcopal communion, so I walked through what it meant and why we did it in 3 minutes or less. For those who may not know...

We all gather together at the altar so signify that we are one community and share Jesus' communion as one body (in this case we lined up to get communion instead of kneeling/standing at the altar rail). We do have communion every Sunday (instead of once a month or less often as some denominations). Most shocking of all, we do serve real wine (even to minors as Malik asked), though the wine this time wasn't incredibly great... but then it never is. That anyone who is a baptized Christian can receive communion, they don't have to be Episcopal (another shock to some). Lastly, no, he did not have to drink the wine if he preferred not to. He could either skip it, dip the bread in (called intinction, or you intinct the bread) or drink directly from the cup.

Seriously, aren't you immensely impressed I know all that, and knew it off the top of my head? I tell you, the one thing I love most about church on Sunday morning it's the significance of us all publicly gathering together as one Body in Jesus' name. But then, I am kind of a people person I guess.

So with that Malik looked pretty freaked out. So he and I went down together, cutting in line (Carl was very gracious to let us in) to make it happen. We went through, both got bread and both had wine. We headed back slightly more experienced and less nervous.

After the service (and probably more than a few rumbling tummies) we headed up the line to have Thanksgiving dinner together.

I need to point out here that the food was prepared almost exclusively by our St. Matthew's group. Families cooked about 32 turkeys and tons of gravy the weekend before we left. Tuesday people prepared vats of spinach casserole, mashed potatoes (I think that's what's in the picture on the right), sweet potatoes, cranberry something (it was warm and tasty and had cranberries in it, but too soupy to be referred to as "sauce") and rolls.

When I saw the work going into it all I ran around and started keeping all of the trays full. There were about 170 volunteers there plus maybe 50 or 60 people from Melissa's old church (if you didn't know, Melissa came to us from St. Patrick's in Mississippi once the church was destroyed). So a bunch of us just ran back and forth making sure everything (including Heather's awesome spinach casserole) was eaten.

After most people had eaten I grabbed some food of my own and went up into the bleachers to eat. I hung with some people from youth group, but also enjoyed spending some time talking to Malik. I won't go into his story here, but I tell you, it's an amazing one. In the 20 minutes we talked all I learned was that there was so much more to this big, quiet man. So much spirituality... He was one person whose life God completely turned around.

I also was lucky enough to get a phone call from home right after I finished eating. Turns out they were just beginning Thanksgiving dinner. So I did get to share a few minutes with them and I still got to say grace for the family. I can't even imaging what it was like on their end, with a speaker phone in the middle of a table with 9 people all listening to grace. Rachel piped up saying "daddy" a few times... I almost started crying. This was definitely the hardest part of the trip for me, being away from family. Anyone who talked to me ahead of time knew I looked forward to the trip, but really didn't look forward to leaving Erin and especially Rachel for a week.

Anyway, with grace said and eating begun I headed off. It was time to have a little dessert of my own. Michael asked me for a whole apple pie. So being the mature adult I was (see my entry on Tuesday at Arby's) I grabbed a pie from the table and brought it back. Of course, he didn't want any. So I set off to give it away. I hit every person at every table asking if they wanted some pie (not like they hadn't already had tons). I only got about 3 takers, but I loved an excuse to float from table to table.

I returned the pie and started helping people box up the remaining food. One van headed out early to bring lunches to people living in a tent city. Another headed out to give food to whoever they found. We just kept boxing and boxing.

Kyle, her brother Andrew and her friend Taylor came while we were boxing up. We all got to joke with Taylor a bit and tell Kyle about Michael's "obsession". Truly, she took it really well.

After more boxes had been filled we headed out to give the dinners away. We tried people in the area, but we'd started so late that most people had already been offered food (though some really nice guardsman took a few off of us). We then headed out to a hospice home near the daycare where we spent our nights. Here we were able to hand off almost all of the food.

We packed their refrigerator so that you couldn't put anything else in. The lovely receptionist (sorry, I don't remember her name... Betty maybe) called each room and asked if they wanted a dinner. Christine and Bethany and others kept running back and forth to bring hot meals up. Other residents came down to talk with us and pick up meals. It made for an awesome night.

While we headed back Kyle and Michael actually sat together (Taylor went back later) and talked. I really felt good seeing that, since I really was convinced we'd freaked Kyle out completely and she'd never talk to Michael.

We got back after dark and had been getting hungry. Thankfully there was still food out and... it wasn't turkey!!! We enjoyed some ravioli... ummm, and other things (I wasn't very hungry and instead spent my time talking).

We spent a while talking with people while a lively game of spoons went on a table over (I'm sad I missed it, but glad I got to talk to others AND get a shower). I was pretty beat and just wanted to chill out a bit. I grabbed a shower, helped make sure we had the right things in the right vans, and just relaxed until about 9. Then the high schoolers and I headed off to the nursery school to sleep.

I did have a pretty good conversation with Heather that night, but I'm sure not going to talk about it here :).

We all went to bed with very little complaint. Ready to get up bright and early to get breakfast and head out to work sites.

Peace,
+Tom/Bob

posted by Tom at 10:58 AM