Saint Charles

Sunday would be the last full day of our vacation. We would be spending it at Amazing Grace Baptist Church. Going to a new Church is always a interesting experience. There is the chance that it will be fine. There is also the chance that it will be worse than expected. You can arrive and find out that hymns have been replaced with drums, or that the Sunday School teacher likes to show off his one year at Bible College by telling us how that particular word is better translated some other way. But sometimes, sometimes you go to Church and immediately feel right at home. The preaching is great and the Spirit of the Lord is resting on this place. That was our experience at Amazing Grace. It wasn't the largest church, but it was one where the Pastor and the people had a heart for God.

Pastor Brian Andrews was a great speaker, and we thoroughly enjoyed our time there. After service we invited the Pastor and his family out for dinner. The response was amusing as he began to politely decline while simultaneously, his wife excitedly accepted. He turned to her and said, "I guess that is a yes". She had to take the bus kids home, but the rest of us went to a El Rancho Nuevo Mexican Restaurant. She showed up right as the food was being served. The Pastor had 4 boys, two of which were grown, one teenager, and one who had just graduated from Golden State Baptist College. I took a guess and asked if he new our Associate Pastor's daughter. Noah thought for a minute and said that they had worked a bus route together.

After dinner, we went to The Lewis and Clark Boat House Museum. It is a small museum devoted to those brave men who took the Missouri River to its source, crossed the mountains of Montana and Idaho, and finally reached the Pacific Ocean. It had a neat treasure hunt for the kids and an interesting documentary in a side room. The whole thing took an hour and only because we watched the whole movie. But it was interesting and certainly an important piece of history for St. Charles, and indeed all of America.

There appeared to be something happening further done the road, and I had hoped to walk through old St. Charles, and maybe visit an Ice Cream shop. But I was really much to full to eat anything else and the kids needed to get back to the house and pack for our final trip home.

We returned to Church that evening, and they were having a teen after-glow after the service. So we left all three of kids at the Church, while Stacy and I finished packing. 1 hour later I picked them up and we said our farewells to this long road of a vacation. The next day we had an easy trip though St. Louis, since it was Memorial Day there was no morning traffic which was very nice. We then stopped off in Murfreesboro because while we were out, Elisabeth's Papa had found her a car. We stopped for dinner and Elisabeth was overjoyed as she was handed the keys to a car that she could pretend was her own.

After our vacation, I asked the kids what their favorite part was, and all three agreed the best part was staying after service at Amazing Grace Baptist Church. I either have the weirdest kids in the world or the best. I'll let somebody else be the judge of that one.