This little church was the basis of my childhood. I was baptized here and I was married here. Oh the stories I could tell of this church. So many lovely memories were made here. My grandmother was one of the original members and my daddy lead the music for years and years so you can see how integral it was to my life. This little church was about 4 or 5 miles from our house, straight down a dirt road back in the day. Of course it now is a paved road, the Moccasin Trail, which connects highway 18 and highway 99. Can you believe they are on Facebook now? Of course, I had to friend them just to have a connection to my past and to keep up with some names of the past; now those last names are the grandchildren of those when I went there.
This church was a stepping stone for a lot of young ministers, some not even ordained, from OBU in Shawnee. Just because we were a small church didn't mean we didn't have a calling and some believed it was to give these young kids a chance to grow in their ministry. You see we had about 40 - 50 on Sundays and 25 on Sunday nights, pretty small but intimate and everybody seemed like family. Actually, a lot of us were kin. I don't want to mislead you into thinking that we never had a pastor because we did. Lots of them stayed for years and years, some only a year or so.
I remember when there was no addition on the right side. Now that was a long, long time ago. I remember Bible school and many parties, especially Valentine's party. Valentine's party was a wonderful sophisticated (to me) banquet served by the ladies of the church. Oh it was nice......table clothes, candles, decorations hanging from the ceiling, heart shaped place cards, mint cups, even appetizers. The meal was served in courses, each course more delicious than the last and ending with some sort of delicious dessert - always on the Valentine's theme. As preteen I had a girlfriend go with me. It really didn't matter to us whether we had a boyfriend, we just enjoyed the experience of pretending to be grown up for an evening. We dressed in our finest for the evening...no jeans for us.
Another thing that seems to have changed and in my opinion not necessarily for the better, is Halloween parties. When I was a child, we dressed in costumes, some scary, but none taken seriously. Sometimes I think parents of today need to lighten up a little. We were not devil worshipping when we had our church Halloween parties. It was just clean fun and a way to get some candy. I am even remember a Halloween party in an old abandoned house that was more for the adults where I fell asleep under a table. I must have been less than 4 years old. It is one of my first memories.
So many fun times; New Year's Eve parties, Valentine's party, Easter Egg Hunt, many summer homemade ice cream parties, Halloween parties, Thanksgiving Dinners, Christmas services with a sack of candy to take home, and lots and lots of church dinners. We were country people and our lives revolved around our church and our grade school. Our grade school was a few miles away from our church so we had our school community and our church community but everybody within a 12 mile radius knew each other.
This church is the basis for my spiritual life for which I am grateful. I am not a saint, nor do I pretend to be, but I think that I am who I am due to my early religous experiences. I am so grateful to the folks now long gone and a few members still there that were willing to do the Lord's work and teach the young the ways of Christ.
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