In East Dublin

After leaving Life Center on sunday after church I took Marks advice and headed south through Warner Robins and Bonair across 96 and through Tarversville. I have since found out that that stretch between Bonair and Tarversville is prime blackbear country, but oh well i didn't see any. By tuesday afternoon I had gotten all but about 8 miles from Jeffersonville which I had decided was my destination for the week and was planning on going about three more miles that day and finishing the rest of it the next morning. The problem with all of this was that some where in all of the hiking over the last two and a half days I had worn and opened up a blister on the back of my right heal. This would not be as painful as it was if moleskin would stick to your ankle, but it just doesn't like to stay there for very long. The other small problem was that I had gone about nine miles and camped the night since the last time I had filled up my water suplies. The good news is that I got stopped by the sherifs and knew that there should be a small church about a mile ahead on the right where I could stop and get some water. As headed down the road, rather slowly at this point a car passed stopped, sat, then came back and stopped next to me. The guy inside asked if I could use a ride and I asked if he would just take me as far as this church up the road a little ways. I got in and we got to talking, he is also an out of church christian upset with the problem of the differance between faith and religion. We ended up missing the turn for the church and he took me all the way to Jeffersonville, but as we were talking he gave me on e of the most fitting statements between faith and religion. He said that growing up in the church they had given him allot of answers. Answers that he was not allowed to question. Where he was at now he was beyind that and looking for the right questions. That really struck a chord with me. God is so big, so unfathomable; As we search for him all the better we can do is to refine the questions that we have about him. Reigion gives us easy answers, faith teaches us to ask the right questions in our search for God. Jeffersonville was a pretty neat small town. I bummed around for the day. As I canvassed the town I saw that one of the churches had a tuesday night bible study. Not having anything else to do I waited around till six fourty five and joined them. The service that night at beyond the walls was really neat. It was a very interactive service because it was really set up as a bible study that they had all prepared for, and not just a regular sermon. After the service no one knew of a good place for me to spend the night, so at my request the pastor dropped me off at the Sherifs station to see if anyone there could tell me a place that I might be able to camp. The night deputy told me taht I could camp in the city park, and he also told me about a church in Danville, about 8 miles away that I might check out called Mt. Zion. The next morning, I woke up and during the course of the day came across a pair of people that I had a great time talking to. The both really strongly recomended that I talk to the pastor at the local Church of God. One of them even called him and set up an appointment for me. Though the circumstances have since changed through furhter conversation, this was to be the first truely negative encounter I have had with a church. The pastor told me that he saw me as a bright young man, who should be at home with a real job being constructive to the body rather than wandering around using sympathy tactics to get handouts from churches. The real gyst of the conversation I got from him was really one of fear. I know that he was trying to be helpful to me, but the few hurtful statements and even more so the dissapointment in my reception from a person that others had reasured me was the man to be talking to brought me all the way to the edge of tears. He told me that the reason the church used to be able to operate the way it did was because it was a different culture back then. The reason they were different than us is that they were a peculiar called out people wasn't it? Are we still not supposed to be that? Is a difference in culture really a valid reason that we cannot still realy rely on the church or is it a sad statment on our state of affairs? We need to stop accepting the curent state of the church as Ok if we really do see problems in it. Don't we need to be working towards change by being the impetus for it? I told the pastor that I would rather go and investigate Mt. Zion than accept his offer for a hotel room for the night, and he called the pastor from Mt. Zion and drove me over. My reception at Mt. Zion was much much better. The pastor there also told me flat out that he did not understand what it was that I was doing, but he didn't really need to if God had called me to do it. The congragation at the wednesday night service was extreamly warm and welcoming as well. The church did not have much of a place to put me up for the night, but let me string up my hammock in their playground facilities for the night. In the morning the pastor told me that it was a sad function of the way the american church works, but that he really could not think of a thing for me to do to help out around the church. They hired grounds and maintenance crews that took care of everything. He did not want to leave me hanging out to dry however and called a freind in Dublin to see if there might be more for me to do out here. His freind was more than willing to have me on for a while. The pastor from Mt Zion dropped me off in East Dublin Thursday morning on his way to Scotsburough, and I have been here at AAA Furniture Refinishing and Custom Cabinets having a great time ever since. It looks like I will be hanging out here with Jeffory Aaron, my host, and his family till about Wednesday, so I wil update you on my activities here closer to the time of my departure.

Thank you all for all the phonecalls, texts, emails and posts here on the Blog they have been a huge encouragement. Things are still going great, and while I am still getting blisters during the walking portions of the trip, they are not near as bad as they have been. Also once again, sorry that these are so poorly edited and that my spelling abilites are elementary at best, but they are posted in a pretty big hurry. Yall are the best.