½ Tank #26

We took the long(er) route to Massachusetts since we had to go through Rhode Island. On the way we stopped at a mailbox and stickered, of course.

When we finally made it to Greena’s, we took awhile to decide if the house we were circling was actually her house or not because it looked pretty dark and we couldn’t see a house number on it. But it was, and Greena welcomed us in warmly. We all sat in the living room chatting and looking at some pictures of her daughter’s wedding. Greena brought up, seemingly out of nowhere, the subject of speaking in tongues. She said that she felt very led to talk to us about it, which I didn’t really understand because I don’t know that Hannah and I have ever talked about it before. It has since proven to be kinda applicable, though, especially for Hannah. The topic of the Spirit and gifts has been coming up frequently for Hannah the past week and is getting her to think about the Spirit’s leadings in her life. She has become very focused using all of her skills and passions to glorify God and help others, and right now the vision she has is for a coffeehouse that will work with victims of sex trafficking, both as an employment opportunity and as a financial support of other related organizations. There is of course more to it than that, and you can ask her for more details if you’re interested, but I’m really excited for her to have the goal and can’t wait to see the idea become reality.

Anyways, back to Greena’s. Her husband, Ian, got home late from work, so we didn’t meet him until the next morning. He was super helpful, though, and kept finding maps of various places for us to take. Included in that was a map of Boston, which is where we were headed that day. So after a good breakfast and lot’s of advice from our hosts, we set off to meet on of Hannah’s “friends” who lives in Boston. I put that in quotes because I think she only met him once, maybe twice, this summer while she was living at home and he was working at the camp her brother went to. Yet Francois was kind enough to take the day off from studying and walk all over the city with us. On the way into the city we ran across a toll booth that we didn’t know about. And we weren’t really prepared with cash. And it was pouring to the point that we couldn’t see. So we accidentally pulled into a lane that was for EZ Pass holders only, and of course a car pulled up right behind us so we couldn’t back up, and we had to count out a bunch of change in order to pay for the toll. They probably weren’t too happy with us dumb Washingtonians that morning.

We saw all kinds of stuff that day in Boston -- some historical, some random, some beautiful, and some Cheers. Okay, that might qualify as the random, but I was excited. Except it didn’t really look much like the show did. I also learned that my roommate (hi Abby) was very right when she said that Boston was not laid out very well. I felt lost the whole time we were walking around. Some random highlights from the day: Francois looking right at Hannah and not recognizing her and walking away, seeing a tour guide dressed up in colonial attire and trying to convince his group to buy nuts from a vendor, seeing a car all the way from Idaho (which is also Francois’s home state) and watching them go the wrong way down a one-way street [sidenote: remember this car, it comes back later], saying goodbye to Francois, only to run into him again inside a Whole Foods that we said we weren’t going to go to, and getting back to the car and finding a parking ticket because apparently meters are only free on Sunday (it was Saturday).

After getting dinner really quick we set out to Salem in hopes of finding something really scary since it was so close to Halloween. Those hopes were crushed. Everything either cost money, or just wasn’t scary. We were highly disappointed. So once we were thoroughly soaked from the rain, we drove around a bit, stopped at a Dunkin Donuts, then took the very roundabout way back to Greena’s house. When we arrived there was lots of candy put out before us, so even though we had just had doughnuts, we snacked on that for a bit. Greena and Ian went to bed around midnight, and Hannah and I stayed up checking email and watching SNL. Which, since we were on the east coast, should have been live for real, instead of a delayed live. Or I might be wrong about that. Either way, it was really nice to just sit and watch tv, and luckily that episode was actually pretty funny. It’s nice of SNL to try something new. :)

The next morning we woke up early and followed Greena up into Maine where she goes to church. While there we met her daughter and one of her sons, both of whom were very nice. The church service itself was very interesting. They were pretty charismatic, and towards the end some members of the worship team started speaking in tongues. Hannah was really turned off by this, and I just wasn’t able to connect to God as well then. I know that everyone has different styles of worship, but that isn’t mine. I’m not a fan of people speaking in tongues when they’re in front of a group of people because I think that that should be a private thing between just one person and God, or that there needs to be an interpretation for what is being said. But that’s just my opinion and obviously not everyone is going to think the same way. And that’s good because I’m probably wrong. It was cool to see how much emotion some of the people there put into their worship, though.

God bless, over and out.
~M