Sunday in Fargo North Dakota

Another beautiful day in Fargo, North Dakota. We woke up with the sun shining and the temperature was 50 degrees. Sunday is a day of worship in our household and Jim and I still want to be able to worship on Sundays. Last night we found the Lutheran Church of the Cross that was about a mile and a half down the road. We had called the church office to see about truck parking but thought that since it was so close we would walk. Then it dawned on us...we had brought our bicycles with us and a mile and a half would go a lot faster on a bike. I think most would understand, get to sleep a little longer and might not wind up as sweaty during church. I know that when we all grew up, church was put your Sunday best on and head to service. I'm glad that dressing up is not as important as it used to be because going to church after riding a bike would not be a pretty sight. Well, this morning brought a little scare, neither of us had set an alarm, church didn't start until 10:00 and we always wake up pretty early, so we thought we didn't need to. I had woken up earlier and decided to go back to sleep since it was 4:00 am. I'm not sure what woke me up, but I got up, looked at the clock and it said 8:15. I woke Jim up because for one, we had planned on taking showers and showers aren't necessarily ready when you want to take one or you have to wait in line, so I was panicking just a little. We got up, got together our shower things and went over to take a shower. At some time, I'm not sure when, I looked at the cell phone and it said 7:30. I had forgotten that my watch and the truck clocks are all set on eastern time because that is the time zone that FedEx has us follow which is great because that is home time. The problem arises when you are doing something local, we tend to forget about the time. I should say that I do, Jim uses his cell phone for time and he confuses me when we are different time zones when he tells me what time it is. Once we figured out the time, we relaxed a little. So, we dressed in our Sunday as best as it gets while riding a bike and headed off to church. The church we attended had a very interesting story. The church campus is shared by two congregations: one Lutheran and one Catholic. They have a website if you are interested in their story. http://www.lutheranchurchofthecross.com

The service was traditional, complete with the Cranberry hymnals. The church itself was contemporary with a beautiful sanctuary and the seating was wide instead of deep with both pews and nice cushion chairs.It also had two projected screens with words to the songs and prayers. The church has a pretty big congregation and has quite a mix of young and old. It was great to have parents around trying to quiet their children. There was a couple in front of us that had a little girl and during the offering the children take up money and put it in a water jug (just like our home church, First Lutheran Upper Sandusky, OH). There were probably about 20 or so kids taking money up and she just kept standing there, and after the last person left, she stood there even longer just staring at the jug. Finally she put the money in and went back to her parents. I told the parents that she was being polite and let all the others go before her and was probably saying a little prayer too. (she was probably around 2-3 years old..very cute). Later in the service she kept trying to put her barrette in her mom's hair and told her mom that she needed the barrette and said to her mom, "Don't you want to be pretty?", "You need the barrette so that you'll be pretty." - that made me chuckle.

They have two pastors, Pastor Bill and Pastor Joel (Senior and associate pastors). Pastor Joel gave both the children's message and the sermon. The children's sermon he had the kids be a blade of grass and talked about how water and sun help the grass to be strong. He showed them a sprinkler and that sometimes the grass needs water from the sprinkler just like we need our faith sprinklers and he talked about communion and baptism. Very neat, the kids acted out being blades of grass.

In the sermon he talked about the gospel for today which discusses confrontation. I thought that the message was insightful. The gospel shares that if someone has sinned against you, talk to that person about it. If that doesn't work, then bring others with you and if that doesn't work then take it to the church. I know I'm doing a really poor job of paraphrasing this, it is Matthew 18:15-20. Anyway, the personal story he shared about his last call and the remodeling of the parsonage and how he was being not so nice to the volunteers from the church because he thought things should be done certain ways and they did it the way they thought was right. Toward the end of the project, he asked a friend of his if he had been a little harsh with everyone. His friend was silent and of course didn't want to hurt his friend, so he said nothing. Pastor Joel said tell me, I really want to know. After a couple times of asking, his friend said, "you know you probably should tone it down a little bit." Pastor Joel stated that this probably made their friendship stronger and that it is scary to talk to our friends about things because we all want to be nice. Then he asked us to think of the nicest thing someone has ever done for us. Then, he said....(wait for it).....discuss it with the person next to you. Oh, no, Lutherans discussing things during service, not heard of....and then he said what all good Lutheran pastors say, "I understand this is something very non-lutheran to do, but just try." After about a 3 minute wait time, some started discussing. I'm not sure what everyone was waiting for, maybe for God to give them some sign that it was all right to talk in church, I'm not sure. It wasn't just this congregation, our church would have done the same thing.

A little difference in their service compared to ours wasn't much. They had a welcome and sharing of Peace before the service started and announcements they did at the end of the service. Second week in a row we were able to have communion. In our home church we have communion twice a month and so did this church, we just came on one of those Sundays. I'm not sure why and I didn't ask, but there was a baptism but they had it after the service. I had not heard of that before, but maybe they had decided to just have family, not sure, I'm sure there was something.

The bulletin cover had a plain cover with a black billboard with white letters that said, "that"Love thy neighbor"thing....I meant that. - God". Put a smile on my face as soon as I walked in the door. The people were friendly and when were entering the church there were two boys passing out bulletins, they must have been brothers and were probably only about 4 or 5 and gave very good directions to the bathrooms. As we were leaving we were introducing ourselves to the Pastors and sharing with them that we were just passing through and were expediter truck drivers. A woman was standing behind us and started talking to us, I shared with her that we had a blog that we write about our adventures. She shared with us that her husband was a retired truck driver and she was a retired special education teacher. She thought her husband would like to read our blog, so we gave our blog site to her. We left church together and continued to talk, her and I talked education and then we also discussed their church and its history. We were happy to meet her and hope that she will visit our blog from time to time. Amazing people!

After church we thought we'd head back to the truck because the temperature was now about 65 and thought that t-shirts were more appropriate than our long sleeves. Since we are small country folk in a big city, we thought that before we went anywhere with our bikes, we had better get a bike lock. Fargo has a population of about 105,000 with North Dakota State University. So, off to Wal-mart on our bikes to get a bike lock. Jim went in and bought the mother of bike locks, so our bikes should be safe at least for now. We were hungry and debated about where to eat since now we were on the other side of town. We found Culvers and for those of you who don't know, they are the home of the butter burgers and frozen custard. We don't have those in our area of Ohio but had eaten there in other states. Good wonderful fattening food, but we were biking so it balances. While we were there we decided that we would go see a movie and decided to go see, "the Help".

It was a while before the movie so we decided to ride to Best Buy. We are still looking for an inverter and thought they might have one. Fargo is pretty biker friendly. They have marked bike routes and on the roads they have bike lanes which made getting around pretty easy. We only had to turn around a couple of times because we ran out of sidewalk and couldn't cross a major intersection. At one stop light, a lady rolled down her window and said you have nice bikes and started talking to me about them, then the light turned green and they were off. You know, after sharing our whole bike lock, I really don't believe that anyone here would steal a bike. Almost every car we passed, people waved at us and every person we passed said, "hello and have a great day or isn't it a beautiful day". In my opinion this city is a small town in disguise. And I'll also mention very good bike riding, no hills, now that is a major plus for Jim and I on our bikes and people allow you to have the right of way and don't run you over, major plus.

After we went to Best Buy, by the way, no such luck on the inverter, probably going to have to order it and have it delivered home, we went to the movie. The movie theater reminded me of the one at home, theater style seats and big screen. If you haven't seen "the Help", go see it, it is an awesome movie and I think now I have to read the book. The theater was packed. The movie was one of those that made you laugh and cry and applaud, awesome!

After the movie we headed back to the truck stop since the sun was now going down. For those of you who like biking and exercising, it only took us about 10 hours to ride 10.08 miles:) It was a lot of fun. We wanted to be able to go to the Air Museum but is was closed on Sundays, which by the way, other than restaurants, most of the businesses do not open until 12:00 here. From the truck stop we came over to McDonald's so that I could update the blog.

As we've been sitting here, we've been observing the crew here at McDonald's. They are a very happy crew that have a lot of fun while they work. Jim and I had a good time discussing their interactions. One crew member in particular reminded us of one of our previous students, who is a good family friend. It was pretty weird, there was a guy here that looked just like him and then started discussing politics with another person. Our friend's favorite topic is politics. We both couldn't help but laugh and of course now the whole crew probably thinks we are crazy. Some say that we each have a twin somewhere in the world, well we decided that this was truly our friend's twin. We'll be talking and smiling about that one for a while.

Tomorrow, we will be washing the truck, doing a little maintenance on it and then headed for Minnesota. We pick up early Tuesday but will probably head that direction tomorrow afternoon after our Labor is done on the truck. Whether or not you are working, have a great Labor Day!

We are heading back to the truck. We will share more about our adventures later. Until then, keep positive thoughts in your heart and look for the positives in everyone and everything around you! Life is good and we thank God everyday for what he has done for us and for giving us this wonderful country to live in! God bless you all and be safe when you drive.
Peace, love, hope and joy..
Judy