Sunday!

I’ve got to get to writing about this while it’s still in my mind.

We had spent long hours talking the night before and revealed some intimate subjects to one another. It was good, open, honest communication. I was honored to have Rosie be so candid and to know that she wanted the same from me. She was respectful of my privacy, but let me know what she wanted to know about.

As anyone who has read her blog knows, Rosie is intelligent, and perceptive. I have enjoyed the quality of our conversations very much. It is like we have known each other for a long time. It feels as though we don’t just finish each other’s sentences, we think each other’s thoughts. It is eerie!

Sunday morning, Cameron was off to work a motocross event at Angels’ Stadium for the day. He was a pretty big time motocross champion in his younger days.

After a morning of deep conversation, I took the dogs for a walk, trying to try out my horse skills on these “predators” to see what the difference was. There wasn’t much. I felt that I could transfer a lot of my knowledge to dogs, if I kept my mind awake. On our walk, my mind was mostly kept awake by the idea that I didn’t quite know where I was going. When I had walked with Rosie, we were doing a lot of talking and there wasn’t much that looked familiar. It turned out that we had covered a lot more ground than I had thought. I briefly thought about going back the way I came, but then figured, just how lost could I get? I had some landmarks.

I got back and it was getting on time to get ready to go to the Kingdom Hall. I knew that there would be a crowd of people wanting to meet me and I was eager to meet them. It was clear that this was a community of people who mean a great deal to Rosie and I was curious to see what they felt like.

I put on my new suit, courtesy of Cameron, and we had some left-over pizza and Cameron’s mother’s pumpkin pie with whipped cream for lunch.

We drove to the Kingdom Hall which is on Via Con Dios. This is the street in Santa Margarita on which all of the “churches” have been built. It is next to the Mormon temple. We entered and found our seats. I was greeted by several people whom I had met at Rosie’s on Thursday. The talk was given by Bill, a close friend of both Rosie and Cameron’s. His talk was on Forgiveness. It was a timely topic for Rosie as she has been struggling with it. I think his talk helped clarify some things for her. It certainly seemed helpful.

The second part of the service was a question and answer session about seeing others as Jehovah would see them. The gist was that rather than simply seeing faults, as we often do, Jehovah sees the whole of the person. That, if Jehovah can accept their participation in the community, those within the community might accept that they do not know the entire story, as only God can. It was an interesting idea. I can see how helpful that would be when people start judging one another in the community.

The leader of the discussion, would ask scripted questions and the congregation would raise their hands if they had an answer. Everyone was invited to participate. Children were treated as equals and it was encouraging to hear how seriously they took their participation.

After the discussion, a final song was sung and then we, informally, became center stage. Many people had been waiting to come over and introduce themselves and meet me and to tell me how much they thought of Rosie. Many had been reading the blogs and told me that they felt that they knew me already.

Each person was quite genuine and sincere in their joy for us. There were a few tears. I felt that I was awash in an ocean of Rosie’s friends. I felt valued. I felt quite touched and look forward to seeing the community again.

We got home and napped, which was getting to be a pretty solid part of our schedule. Cameron returned from his event and fixed an amazing dinner of pasta with scallops and fish. It was delicious. It would’ve been difficult to find a restaurant that served as good a meal.

After dinner we were looking for a film to watch and after attempting “The New World”, the Pocahontas/John Smith story done again, we settled on “Music and Lyrics” the Drew Barrymore/Hugh Grant flick. it was actually quite cute and funny.

After the film Cameron went to bed and Rosie and I sat up and talked until late. I was planning to leave the next day and she was becoming wistful about that.