busy day

i washed 4 fire trucks today. no, i don't have any pictures (proof) of this. hello, fire trucks are huge, i was too busy scrubbing. most of the time i even had a child on my shoulders (who i had never met) to get the high parts. it was a busy day.

today was Love Cedar Valley. a whole bunch of local churches got together for random acts of kindness all over the area. crews were put to work doing everything from painting and cleaning toilets, to handing out cookies and flowers around town. my mom and i joined a crew that went to the waterloo fire stations. we dropped off a basket with stuff to make dinner (pork chops, potatoes, dessert, etc) and candy (lifesavers of course) and other goodies, then we asked them to put us to work. we were expecting to clean bathrooms and make beds, but they had another idea. they handed us some rags and a hose and we washed the trucks. we thought this would only happen at the first station, but by the time we got to the next ones our reputation had preceeded us. it was pretty great. we got to put in some quality time with some pretty cool dudes, play on (and in!) fire trucks all day, try on big huge boots and hats, and even did some pole dancing. okay, not dancing, more like pole...noticing (they're super slippery!). i also got to tag along to make ice cream cones for some folks at a nursing home. all of the participants (almost a thousand!) met up later in the afternoon for some worship time. it was neat hearing stories of how other people spent the day. there were all kinds of cool stories, especially from the people who went door to door cleaning toilets for strangers.

i tend to avoid situations where i'll run into lots of people i know from high school. i'm not sure why, it's just exhausting; but today i realized that most of the time these situations are at gatherings where a bunch of local churches have gathered together to do something. that's pretty great.

in other news: alisha and i are trying out two (2) churches tomorrow that are exact opposites. one of them (prairie lakes) is a huge suburban fancy new shiny mega-church, complete with "instrumental worship" (rumor has it) and lots and lots of people. the other, abundant life meets in a really old church building right by my grandma's house and is small and personal and emphasizes weekly small groups. we'll see how it goes. i'll give you the full report tomorrow night.