I prowled through the nature reserve and tried to do homework. Then that night caught a movie called Eight Men Out, about the Black Sox Scandal of 1919. I'd always meant to watch that one, so it was cool to finally see it. Saturday Night Live was a rerun from October where Tom Hanks hosted, the cold open was a Trump-Hilary debate. He has a new movie coming out next week called The Circle, it's kind of a thriller based on a Facebook-like company. And Guardians Vol. 2 comes out in two weeks, which is awesome.
Woke up today at 8 a.m. with the thought "It's been too long since I went to church." So I ponder for a minute if there's anywhere possible to go to (downside of not really making any connections here). Then I remember that there's some kind of Pentecostal church across the road. That's better than nothing, I suppose. So I walk over to the Claremore Assembly of God, which was interesting. The people there were aggressively friendly in introducing themselves during the service (the guy in front of me shook my hand three times), but Sunday school was all right. The greeter pointed out various classes, saying it was an a la carte type of thing; everyone drifted to whichever study sounded interesting. So I see that there is a group doing First and Second Samuel, which seems hard to get wrong, as it's mostly narrative. (Revelation? Eh...not so much.) The Young Adult class sounded too intimidating and awkward, where a ton of "get-to-know-you" questions would be fired my way and everyone would be staring at me. (In theory, a Young Adults Bible-study group of some kind sounds like a great idea, though. But at least at Grace Baptist, most of that group was part of CCF, which made things awkward. Also I didn't quite trust the leader, though Ryan Galdemez said he was a good guy.)
So the Samuel study turns out to be three elderly women and two elderly men, which is much better. They ask polite basic questions, then go back to their normal weekly discussion and banter. That's perfect for social interaction in a new situation. And old people conversations are the best to listen to. One of the women says about the Young Adults course, "We used to call it the Young Married Couples class, but, uh....then we sort of ran out of young married couples." The section of Scripture studied this week was from 1 Samuel late chapter 19 to the early part of chapter 22, where David and Jonathan make their arrow-firing pact in the middle of one of the many Saul-David clashes. And in chapter 22 a whole bunch of priests were murdered.
The sermon was from 2 Timothy 3, the pastor emphasized the "these times are awful!" part and kind of skipped over Paul's "here are my instructions for you, Timothy" bit. But he stuck to the text a pretty good amount, compared to other Pentecostal services I've gone to. The sanctuary was designed round, like at First Baptist-Okmulgee, so that gave a kind of familiar feeling to it. And the acoustics sounded very good. The worship team played a couple choruses, they were shaky theologically but pleasant to listen to. Then they played "Tis So Sweet," which was really good. The lady on the other end of the pew said she graduated from NSU with a MassComm major, which I thought was interesting.
It was kind of nice visiting an unfamiliar church where you don't know anyone.
Because voluntarily meeting new people is exhausting, I immediately take a nap after getting some lunch in the dining hall. So then I decide that since it's a beautiful sunshiny day, I may as well practice volleyball for a while. On the way back I run into some people getting an Ultimate Frisbee game started, they ask me to join. I've played with them a couple times, it's the same kind of thing as at NSU my freshman year. There's a group that gets together a couple times a week to play Ultimate on the soccer field, and occasionally I'll join in, because it's exercise. I played better defense than I usual, got a block or two, threw and caught a couple of touchdowns each, though my team lost three of the four games played.
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| Old stock picture I snapped freshman year, due to Ultimate Frisbee not being a very common photo subject. |
The Rockets won today's basketball game, the Thunder managed to lose in their typical stupid way. (It's rough being a fan of a team at times.) The NASCAR race at Bristol was postponed until tomorrow because of rain. I need to wrap up readying a presentation over a serial killer named Edmund Kemper for Psych... And I need to finish an essay about southern gothic lit. It's been a long week. I'm tired.
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