Well, we certainly know that we have left the country. There are people everywhere in our hotel. It almost seems that they are multiplying – kind of like squash on a vine. We got up to a noisy hotel and headed out for the early service at Christ the King Lutheran Church.The church has a radio broadcast of its services as well as a parochial school. This was a much different experience than our little mountain church of a week ago – but just as friendly. We were greeted warmly at the door and welcomed in person by both Pastors Neugebauer and Goble before the service.
While we were sitting in the pew waiting for the service to begin, a man sitting with his two children turned around and spoke to my husband. “I think that I’ve seen you before,” he said. After a few quick questions, turns out this man’s wife – the church organist – was a graduate of St John’s in Winfield. They come back every so often for the college reunion. Apparently, he and my husband had talked while they were visiting Trinity Lutheran in Winfield. We spoke with his wife later and found that we had several common acquaintances. It just goes to show you that no matter how you slice it, it’s still a very small world.
The service was great. The boys still didn’t want to go up to children’s time – too shy. During the summer, Pastor Goble let children take a bag home and bring things back. A young girl had taken it home and brought it back filled with two additional bags. Taped on the outside of the bags was $1 bill and a message for Pastor Goble. It read, “Pass the buck to Pastor Chuck.” And Pastor Goble gladly did.
Paster Neugebauer preached on Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43. He started with a great illustration on the futility of living for this life only. He talked about some of the wonderful achievements he had done in his life – athletic awards, getting a date with the most beautiful girl in high school, raising four boys and even being a grandpa. Then, he said that he had just done something in the last week that made him the proudest of all. Prouder than any of those other things – and he held up a tomato. He said, “Look at this. I, Pastor Chuck Neugebauer grew this beautiful tomato.” Then he caught himself. He said, “Well, God actually grew it. I just managed to not kill it.”
He went on to say that he would like to put the tomato on a shelf for all to see. But, in reality, he knew that the tomato’s life would be fleeting. In fact, if he put it on the shelf, it would soon begin to rot and die. I’m not sure how he did it (I had to do a little parenting in the pew just then) but he began discussing how we should live each moment of life reacting to and treating people as they will be in
heaven, not as they are now – a good way to move through life, I think.After church, we returned to the hotel, changed, packed up and headed out to see Mud Island – a museum and river park on the edge of the Mississippi River. The museum, about the culture and history along the Mississippi River was terrific. It had 18 galleries and life size replicas of a gunnery boat and steamboat. The boys enjoyed climbing on these. They also had an audio tour that added embellishments and voices about the exhibits on display. The museum was well done. The pace was just right. The tour Nazi called out the numbers that we were to type into the MP3 again. We had a great time.
Outside of the museum there was a to-scale model of the lower Mississippi. It was a topographical map which was a great hands-on way to demonstrate the curves and depths of the river as it rolls from it’s juncture with the Ohio all the way to it’s delta in Louisiana. We spotted the location where we crossed at Cairo and the boys had fun wading in the river from there to the Arkansas line.
After that, we headed back to our car on the monorail that we had taken out to the island and headed across the Mississippi River bridge and into Arkansas on I-40. The trip was easy this time – Interstate the entire way. I sat back, began to read one of my library books and enjoyed the rest of the day on the road.
We stopped at about 8:30 in Tahlequah, OK at the Holiday Inn Express. We sat for about an hour while the boys enjoyed swimming in the pool. We met another family of boys that were looking forward to a canoe trip on the Illinois the following day. We told them about our harrowing adventure on the Green and wished them a sunny, cloudless day.
