You like Saturday Sabbath, too?

We spent this past Saturday morning at the Seventh Day Adventist church in town. I still can proudly say that I know very little about the SDAs, and most of what I know is from doing college overnights at their camps and from dating one once. (I think that I can actually say that what I know about the SDAs is that they are vegetarians, they celebrate the Shabbat on Saturdays like us Jews, and that they are kind of straight-edge.)

So, once again, we made our way over to a church that I had passed one hundred times but never paid any attention to/never actually noticed. We walked in the church and were greeted by the pastor and some of his friends. They were very kind. I walked in to the main room about 30 seconds after Erin did and sat down next to her. My view, however, was completely blocked by some older woman with an afro. Or perhaps I should call it an advent'fro. And she smelled like old lady hairspray. Fortunately, she was just there for the pre-service service where some guy was discussing the merrits of making friends with people around town and having them over for dinner as a way to get them to maybe (hopefully) join the church.

The service commenced and Erin and I were excited by the group- lots of older people, lots of Hispanics, lots of families. There was even a family there who had recently lost their husband/father. The pastor was joking about how he was going to be buried in tie dye and birks. This made me think that the crowd was fairly open. The main prayer leader for the day was a Mexican lady who conducted the first prayer in English and the later prayer in Spanish. I have to say, I didn't understand a word of her second prayer, but Spanish can be so beautiful that it didn't even matter. We sang some songs (which I have to say were pretty much just like every other church song) and then the pastor gave his speech. It was really concrete and real stuff, and other than the times that he talked about how Satan put evil thoughts in our mind, I found it all pretty much relevant and nonreligious. Which is why I dug it. It was pretty run of the mill- nothing too boring, nothing to weird or eccentric.

Next week: Stay tuned for a visit with Eckankar, the church of light and sound. Right on.