The church we’re part of has a dozen campuses scattered throughout the county, and a few months ago, Gerry and I decided to start attending the campus closest to home. Church is held at a lovely, sprawling Spanish-style retreat center on a large spread of property. There’s a lake, picturesque hills, mission-style chapel, hacienda and courtyard, organic farm and more… It’s a very popular venue for weddings!
The somewhat smaller size of the congregation is much more what I’m used to, and being able to gaze on nature through the chapel’s wall of windows while worshipping really helps me to focus. And although it’s the same demographic as up at the main campus, being a smaller group at least allows greater opportunities for getting to know others.
Personally, I think that you get to know people best when you serve on a team with them regularly. So joining one of the volunteer teams at Rancho Capistrano would be just the perfect thing to do … except for the fact that we’re planning to move away in a few months. It doesn’t seem right to show up and say, “Train me. Put me on your schedule. Depend on me. Okay now, I’m leaving.” And it’s not exactly motivating to make new friends when you know you’re going to have to leave them soon.
So I jumped at the chance to volunteer for a special event at church today! We were going to have a potluck (first ever for this campus!) and then light up three giant crosses on the hill for the Easter season … I signed up for the setup team. The plans were grand, for an open-air picnic down on the lawn by the lake. But then it decided to rain all day. Sideways rain. All day. So we put up some pop-up canopies along the side wall of the chapel and did our best to fit tables under the canopies in places where they wouldn’t get drenched every time the water collecting on top decided to empty itself down the cracks between tents. Nope, we made sure that food stayed dry. Just the people got sporadically dumped on … self included. (Free showers! Yay!)
Oh, it was a comedy of errors! The two people in charge got sick and didn’t show up, so we the motley crew pretty much winged it. Some bossypants ladies showed up and tried to stir up drama, but I just kept walking away from them and finding a new job to do until they followed me there.
But all’s well that ends well, and as I reassured one of the guys who was fretting about all of stuff going wrong, “No matter what happens, nobody is going to go home tonight saying, ‘That potluck sucked!’ What they are going to remember is, ‘That free food was awesome! I had fun talking to people! Wasn’t it neat when those crosses went up?!'”
We didn’t actually watch the crosses go up. Instead we hung out in the nearly empty chapel with a few friends and played with their kids.
Today is the first time I’ve felt like I “belonged” there. Pretty cool!
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