It's been quite a while. I sort of abandoned my blog the last half of my time with SMRM for various reasons. Let's see if I can catch you up:
July: Helped with pre-parade entertainment for thousands of people on the Parkway on Independence Day. John, Matt, and I hauled around an amp and microphone and sang a medley of patriotic songs over and over for a couple of hours until the parade started at midnight in downtown Gatlinburg. It was actually pretty awesome...it was also my first experience with an energy drink....Word of wisdom: don't chug an entire Monster in 1.5 minutes while running down the Parkway. It made me a little insane.
We finished up day camps, and they were lovely. I met some of the coolest kids toward the end. It's so awesome to meet kids who are actually excited to just sit and play games or laugh at your silliness during Simon Says, especially since they are the product of a generation that has such disdain for anything that doesn't involve a controller or touch screen.
I attended St. Paul Lutheran every Wednesday night, and visited Hills Creek Baptist Church 2 nights, once to speak about my summer and then to sing for them. I also attended Carterstown Missionary Baptist, and every single church was different, but consistently welcoming and warm. It was so cool to go back to my missionary Baptist roots and see that it wasn't what I thought it was all these years. It was also pretty awesome to bring my Yankee co-workers with me and watch their respective reactions to the deeply twangy hymns and spirited preaching. My experiences at St. Paul were also eye-opening and different. For those that don't know, I grew up alternating Sundays at the my mom's missionary Baptist church and my dad's Presbyterian church. Needless to say, I grew up a little confused, and I'm still working through a little bit of that confusion. Anyway, I've seen both ends of the spectrum worship-wise and the Lutheran liturgy really took me back to my Presbyterian days. I truly love liturgy, as opposed to what you would see in a traditional Baptist church, because it takes the focus off of people and their "performance" and places it on the creeds, sermon, and hymns. I find it a lot less distracting, and there's some comfort in doing things like confessing the Nicene creed every week. However, I really believe that either format has its merits and downfalls, so I'm good with either one.
For a while I began to believe that I might be more suited for Lutheranism...it felt like I fit in there. :) But more on that later...
The conversations revolving around birth control, human physiology, and Calvinism continued for the rest of the mission. Seriously, I think I went to bed every single night around 2 AM or 4 AM because I was up talking to someone about one of these issues. However, I wouldn't trade all that sleep deprivation for the world, because those conversations grew me so much, and caused me to dig into the Word like never before. Debates broke out and jokes were thrown around about everything from the inerrancy of the Word to limited atonement, and it was great, albeit very frustrating at times. But I learned a great deal about the beauty of challenge and argument...it can be a very constructive thing, and what's the point of unexamined life and belief? And believe it or not, some of my beliefs were even changed somewhat. These beliefs revolved around my relationships with fellow believers, and my responsibility to their consciences. Very interesting stuff.
August: Originally, I was supposed to go home August 5th. But, I ended up needing to stay til the 7th to finish up ministry with my last Sunday leading worship at our campgrounds...that was until I dropped my laptop on pavement and gravely injured it. I took my laptop to the Apple store in Knoxville, and they told me they'd have it back to me within 1-3 days...because it was so messed up, they ended up shipping it off to California and so I got it back 3 weeks later. So, instead of going home and then coming right back to Knoxville, I ended up staying with the Portier family in Sevierville for an extra week. The father, Robert, is the pastor of St. Paul (the Lutheran church I'd been attending), and I cannot tell you what a blessing that week was. After a week of stress and emotional turmoil, it was such a relief to walk into that house, sit down on the couch, and nom on some of Gerda's (his wife) fabulous sweet bread. They made my time there so fabulously restful and fun, and I will forever be indebted to them for their kindness.
August also meant that I had to part ways with my SMRM teammates and ACMNP friends, which was so very sad. I learned so much from each one of them, and they made my time in the Smokies so much fun. It's strange to come home when no one understands all of your stupid inside jokes and weird noises. It was hard being the last person to leave the East TN, but I was glad that I got to see everyone off. I didn't cry until August 15th, when Scott pulled out of my driveway. That was my very last connection to this summer, and I feel like I finally got the closure I needed. But now things are back to normal, and this summer almost feels like a different world. It's almost like I was in a coma for 3 months and just woke up a month ago. Strange, but good.
In a soon-to-come post, I'll talk about my struggles with the Lutheran v. Baptist debate, internal struggles highlighted by this summer, and life since SMRM.
More to come later... :)
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