July 4th Weekend

It was a great weekend of mostly relaxing. I watched Spiderman 2 on Saturday with Nikki, Steve Tripe and Sarah. Faith joined us for dinner afterwards at Mimi's Cafe. Good stuff.

On Sunday, since we were meeting in house-church, and I was planning on going up to Long Beach in the afternoon to join the singles and their communion service, I decided to check out the First Baptist church right by the house.

Overall I the general feeling I got was that it was very similar to our own service, but maybe a little more boring. Most of the people there were white and old. They had quite a bit of special stuff to celebrate the Fourth of July -- we gave the Pledge of Allegiance to a flag posted there; one lady sang the Star Spangled Banner; four kids dressed in red, white and blue did a tap routine to a recorded song; a special choir song. Their hymnal is quite thick too, and there were a lot of songs for special occasions, a few of which we sang in the spirit of the Fourth. One song was actually sung to commemorate people that served in each of the armed forces -- one verse for navy, another for the army, another for the air force. At each verse the song-leader had those who had served come to the front. The last verse was actually all three lumped together, but the song-leader used it for the marines/coast guard/etc. That was kind of funny.

The message was actually preached by an Asian guy, which I thought was interesting. It was mainly about striving towards unity rather than unanimity. Apparently the church is looking for a pastor to lead their congregation, perhaps has been for a while.

Towards the end of the first service I found out they had a second, more "contemporary" service at 11am, so I decided to check it out too. As I was waiting, they were setting up a band and such, so it looked interesting. When they started up, I thought they started too early because there were only like 12 people in the room. Anyway, the main difference was they had the band and displayed the words on the wall with a projector. It was your typical "contemporary Christian" worship music. And, everyone in the band and worship team was white. Then the same preacher got up to speak, so I took off at that point.

Later that afternoon I was to meet up with Eddy and his crew (Dawny, Steve Tripe, Chris Gabler, and Kim Lamie) to go to Long Beach. Little did I know what I was in for. We left at like 2:45pm and arrived at like 5:30pm after what should have been an hour and a half ride. Note to the wise: don't talk to Eddy while he's driving.

Anyway, we finally made it, and from there it was a great time. I saw pretty much everyone I know from Metro-Heights: Sara, Sam, Bosco, Tanya, Rey, Anna, Vince. Nick too, although I just met him. I also saw Candace, Kris' girlfriend, now ex-, I found out. We all had a lot of fun hanging out and watching the fireworks.

On the way home it was five in the car and I had to sit in the back-middle, which was too warm and pretty blah. So I zonked out, and we got home at like 1:30 in the morning. And it was back to work the next day, bleh. I need FREEDOM!!!