I love my town. I love it because it is small. I love it because they value local commerce. I love it because I can do all of my errands and remain on one road. I love it because I can build a relationship with each person I see on my errands.
Currently I am working (still) on getting to know the baggers at Bill's Shop and Save. I found this great book/directory at my State Farm Insurance that lists demographics of Fremont and all there is to do here and such. Bill's is the 12th largest employer. Gerbers is the largest. I had wondered about that because so many people work at Bill's as a regular job, not just as a summer job or an in-between job. People stay there! One of my favorite baggers, Nate, says that he is working 3 jobs and going ot school to become a Neuro Scientist. Isn't that amazing!? He said he missed the normal starting time for college...like he didn't go right away after high school. But I think he only missed it by 2 or 3 years. He's still so young.
I go to Bill's during their off-times when it is empty. Lilly likes to push the cart around. When I pick out the meat, I tell her to stand by the cart because I don't want her playing with the raw meat packages. (Derpa derpa). Last time, she got mad (she was previously PISSED because I would not give in to her demands for donuts...my sweet girl), and pushed the cart away from me. She pushed it the rest of the way across the store. The meat man and other shoppers laughed and thought it was so cute. And it was. Everyone loves Lilly at Bill's. She loves to go there.
So enough gushing about the grocery store. (Guess where I get to go today too!?)
I also love our weekly newspaper for the county. It's more of a place to advertise events that are going to happen, discuss what the students in the schools are doing, and a place for the community to brag about their accomplishments. There's a section where if you travel somewhere and take a picture of you with the Times Indicator on your travels, they'll post it in the paper. Then there's all the births, divorces, arrests and court appearances, who made the honor lists in college, graduating college, birthday and anniversary milestones, and so on. Lilly's already been in the paper once.
There is a big controversy going on in the editorials for the past month. One guy, I guess, I missed this letter, said that if we are a good community and decent and the Christians that we say we are, we would not allow Fifty Shades of Grey to come to our theater and wouldn't allow anyone to see it. There have been two responses in the last two weeks that are well written, not offensive, and discuss the Constitution, Freedom of Speech and trusting our forefathers and the government....all while saying that they themselves will not be seeing the movie and hope that their grown daughters don't see it either. I am so proud that our community loves the Constitution and sticks up for it and other's rights to choose what they want.
On a different note, I saw a speaker yesterday, who's husband is a judge for the county, who rights children's stories to bring them closer to Christ, etc. She travels the world and gives talks. This sentence came out:
"There are demons out there and especially in those foreign places."
She seemed to believe that the foreign places are more dangerous and less Christian and more demonic, and I truly think she meant actual demons, than the USA. Demons aside, that is not true. There are places that are just as terrible here as there are anywhere else, and there are places in foreign countries that are just as "good" as here. I'm a terrible mission worker. I'd rather fight for the poor and the "demonic" in the USA, my home, than giving my time and money away to other countries. aka those damn foreigners. *sarcasm*
She used the word "foreign" more than once, and I thought it was just a poor choice of words. Which is odd, this woman is GOOD at public speaking. She ooooozes charisma and the ability to make people feel, deep down feel, what she is saying. THat's why she's so good at converting people to Christ. You know she thinks about each word she uses and picks it for a reason. So why choose Foreign? I think there is a prejudice there. She's setting us up to be us vs. them. Americans vs those savage demonic foreigners.
The best I can do as to why she is doing this is because she mentioned that she was assaulted on one of her trips. Assaulted. That's a vague word. Physically? Mentally? Sexually? It says that something bad happened but does not say what. But if it was that bad, she is possibly harboring some residual anger and issues towards those outsiders that hurt her. And I pray for her that she can heal and let go of that anger. By using such a word as foreigner, she is passively and subtly making them the bad guy and telling everyone that they hurt her and she's pissed, but she's not actually saying anything that can prove that this.
You know what bothers me the most about all of this conversation. The casual way we discuss and praise converting people to Christ. Ugh. Can't we bring them Christ and then let him do the rest of the work? Isn't that what faith is? Did I mention I'm a terrible missionary.
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