It's Official

For those of you who have been following the bits and pieces I've posted about my search for a church home, it's official: I'm finally a member of the church I was talking about earlier. :)

The process for membership application in this church was fairly simple. Often, if you've been a member of one church and you decide to transfer, they can accomplish that by what's called a transfer of letter. Since it has been a very long time since I was a member of any church, in part because I would attend my dad's church wherever he went but also in part because I just stopped going when I started law school back in 1992 and never picked it up again (for reasons I've alluded to before), I couldn't get a letter from any church to allow me to do that.

Since I was baptized already back in 1970-something, baptism wasn't necessary. For these situations, this church had me do an interview with one of the deacons and one of the deaconesses, which I did a couple of Sundays ago, and then I gave my testimony on Wednesday night, telling them how I'd come to know the Lord as my savior and other things about my life since then.

It's always a little embarassing for me to do this because when I think about how much God loves me, how grateful I am that He sent His Son to die for my sins and that He raised Him from the dead, and what God has done in my life, I get drippy. I try to power through it, but I get choked up and emotional. I've been like this for as long as I can remember, so I should be more prepared when it happens, but I'm trying to work on it because it can be a little disconcerting (or distracting) for people watching/listening.

Anyway, I did it, and the people in the church who were there (which was only about 25-30 people) went through the process of asking that I be accepted into membership, voting on it, and voila! They will do a brief presentation on a Sunday after the morning service - I don't know when - but otherwise, that's it.

The really cool thing was that after the service last night, this woman came up to me and said, "I don't know if you remember me, but do I look familiar?" I looked at her face, and SHE WAS ONE OF THE GIRLS I'D GONE TO SUNDAY SCHOOL WITH 30-SOME YEARS AGO!!!! How cool is that?!?!? I knew right away who she was, and we hugged and laughed and caught up and just had a great little "old home week" moment.

I told my parents about it after church - called them to tell them first thing when I got home - and I couldn't remember her mom's first name (because I was never allowed to call grown-ups by their first names then), but my dad remembered.

Now, the thing I have to do is get involved in things at this church. I'm not in this just to be able to say I'm a member of such-and-such church. I want to do things - one of the reasons I didn't stay at this other church I'd attended for a while was because it was so big I got lost in it. They had 5 and 6 people lined up to do anything that needed to be done, and I felt useless and unnecessary. That won't be a problem in this church, but I need to sort out what I can do and what they need doing. On one hand, I want to be busy but on the other hand, I don't want to overextend myself.

Stay tuned..... :)