Adding to the Coffee Mug collection....

My dear friend Jo just posted her daughter Emily's performance of the Untitled Hymn at church this morning. I got the email as Kevin was replying to an email from a friend here inquiring why she hadn't seen us at her church for a while. She wondered if I had settled in more and if the kids were doing well. I have to say that both Kevin and I watched the video and were incredibly envious of our friends and loved ones getting to be at church and watch Emily in person today.

We have been here for 80 days now (could have gone around the world by now huh!) and we have settled in pretty well I think. Kevin is so much happier in his job, the girls love school and have made some good friends that all live near enough to walk to their homes and play and we are all enjoying volleyball. I have even made a few acquaintances and a good friend that lives just around the corner so I have someone to talk to once in a while. I think that kevin hit the nail on the head when he mentioned to Edna in his email that I am just not going to be happy until I am involved in a church again. It doesn't even have to be me running things, I just need to feel like I am at home there! I have taken for granted the feeling that you get from feeling loved and needed in your congregation. We have been feeling a huge hole in our lives since we got here that is exactly the same shape and size of Christ UMC in Cabot.

We have tried St. Andrews, the congregation that I came from the last time we lived here but it is about 15 miles from here and takes at least 25 minutes to get there if traffic isn't difficult. Doable but when there are 8 UMC congregations between here and there we decided to try some others before driving that far, besides, they have changed a lot since we were here 8 years ago.

When I contacted the people here on the Emmaus Board, I was invited to Spirit of Faith church. It is still about 12 miles but was worth trying out. It was a small start up church that we thought would make us feel like we were at home, setting up in a school each week and working a lot in missions and needing a youth minister sounded like it was right up our alley....Didn't work, it was too far to drive and they don't have any plans to build in the future. They like setting up each week and want to remain a mission church. That is great for them but we decided to keep looking.

The next one was the home church of Edna, a woman Kevin worked with at U.P. a few years ago. She left the railroad to work at Faith-Westwood UMC here. It is much closer to us and Katie loved the Youth program and the childrens program was good too but the sermons left both Kevin and I cold. I know it isn't about the pastor but if you don't like the sermons, church is much harder to get involved in. We gave it a few weeks and tried different services but still decided to keep looking.

Next on the list was the church where they host all of the Walk to Emmaus gatherings each month, Living Faith UMC. Still about 15 miles from us, long drive but we need to find somewhere and everything around us is lutheran or Catholic. Pastor Terry was great and Pastor Mike is great too but each week we kept comparing the music to Steve and the praise band at Christ UMC. Steve, I don't know if you will ever see this but you have totally ruined us for other praise bands....WE MISS YOU! We have attended Living Faith more than the other churches. It has a small church feel and is a newer church but has offices and a place to hold youth events. They also have a huge bunch of the congregation that has attended the walk and they are looking for a youth minister. All good things! Very good feeling here but there is the fact that it is a long way from home.

Yesterday as we left the Junior high from our volleyball games we drove past St. Paul's UMC for about the 100th time since we moved here. It is about 2 miles from our house (I know, DUH) and it is a beautiful old (143 years) church with a ton of history. Kevin attended when he lived here over the summer and wasn't impressed so we didn't bother to go once the girls and I were here. Since we haven't found the "home" we are looking for yet we thought we might want to give it another try. WOW. I don't think we were hit by the lightning bolt of certainty but it is a beautiful church and a great location. The twins haven't gone and Katie didn't attend youth this week but they have what I am looking for to start off, beautiful sanctuary with pews and a traditional service. They have a prayer shawl ministry, a scrapbooking ministry and a bell choir as well as a chancel choir. Kevin has decided that if he can't have Steve that it might as well be a traditional service, the praise bands are just falling short of the Steve benchmark in his mind! We both liked it much to Kevin's surprise. Must have been an off week when he went the last time. I won't say that it is the same as listening to Jeff and feeling like he is talking directly to me, and it isn't like learning from Aubrietta. Sometimes you just find pastors that speak directly to you and no one else has that effect on you. I will say that this pastor could teach Jeff a bit about brevity....Love Jeff's sermons but he can get long winded on occasion as others will attest to. The service today was about 50 minutes start to finish with a baptism and communion to boot! I could get used to that!

I guess what I need to do is keep praying that God will lead us to the right place. We have added yet another coffee mug to our growing collection of church mugs. This one was delivered by a friendly member of the visiting committee this evening to thank us for visiting and invite us back, a nice touch. We will give it a few more weeks and see how it works out. I do need to feel needed though. I don't expect to ever find what we had at Christ UMC again, I miss you guys more than I thought I would. I don't think any of you knew how much of an impact you made on our lives and how much we miss looking over and seeing you worship with us, even if it meant meeting in a hallway for sunday school or setting up tons of chairs each week. Appreciate what you are blessed to have!