Sweet

How do we figure out what church to visit on a Sunday? In small towns it is fairly simple to choose. In bigger places, we wait for direction! At the Kingman Visitor's Centre we picked up a sheet of local churches - 2 pages of them! The only problem was that no service times were listed. We could call, but decided to pick three Protestant types that sounded good (Ha!) and drive by. They had to be within 20 minutes of our campsite. Thank you, Jane (our GPS).

Church 1 looked dead. The time was falling off the sign - maybe not. Church 2 seemed okay - maybe. Church 3 was sweet! By the front door there was a plexiglass covered board with a sample service on one side and a welcome to visitors on the other, saying that they would welcome us, ask us to fill in an address form and that only this was expected in the offering plate for visitors. Sweet. On top of that, there were parking spaces marked "Visitors - welcome!. Even sweeter.

We arrived and parked as Visitors. It was a very casual, young atmosphere. Padded chairs served as seats and we could see a guitar/drum combo warming. Pastor Ken came out in casual wear and said a few words of welcome and then picked up his guitar and joined the others.

The service was very informal and educational. Pastor Ken could sing, play and preach! The best part was that the lesson for the day was on Joseph!! (West Plains produced Joseph in December). We were humming the songs in our minds as the story unfolded (35 min. sermon; lots of time for songs). Sweet.

Afterwards we got out our Joseph T-shirts and had a picture taken in front of the church. And we got a surprise! On our van was a card thanking us for coming to the service along with two candy cane striped candies attached! Very sweet. The whole thing was very, very sweet. Food for thought.