A little church chat...

Remember Dana Carvey in a Dress?

(Or am I reminding you of my husband imitating Dana Carvey, also in a dress, wig and in front of his whole high school during a pep rally...?) He imitated Dana Carvey as the church lady, better than Dana Carvey did the church lady, am I making any sense? (I'll find that dang old picture and prove it to you, I promise.)

Anyway. My goal for today's post was to get across to you how cool it is to find yourself in a new place... Let's say Brooklyn, New York. And you find your newly married self living in a tiny 3rd floor walk up in what turns out to be one of the poshest places in NYC? (Subsidized by the new law school your husband is attending for sure). AND you know absolutely no one. You haven't met your soon to be boss, as he hired you via email (which only barely existed and no one used at home...). Did I say cool? I meant freaking crazy scary!

What do you and your husband do? (After first buying a futon, to both sleep and sit on, as you brought absolutely NOTHING with you to the VERY LOUD NYC, in fact you sold your car to buy a one way cheap ticket and brought only your luggage.)

You find a phone book and look up the church you belong to, right? And it gives an address, and you assume meetings will start sometime around 9AM, right? And you walk the 20 blocks on a Sunday in August in Brooklyn, in your church shoes, right? And when you get there the doors are open and you walk in, right? And then you see about 2 souls in the whole place and they are setting up chairs. So you help set up chairs, right? Then you find out church starts at 10AM. And who should walk in about 30 minutes later? Your husband's college roommate and his wife, both of whom you knew from 2000 miles away!

And they are moving back 2000 miles away. And they don't want to take any of the crap stuff in their tiny apartment. And they give it all to you. Including a very nice, and very real (and not a futon) bed. And there is a whole congregation of people who you come to love, and who share their lives with you in about the space of 2 weeks.

THAT is the Mormon network as I know it. Now imagine that same thing played out in Long Island 3 years later. (Except we bought a car, moved our real crap stuff, and no one gave us a bed.) And all over again when you move to the New Jersey suburbs. Only this time YOU give THAT bed from Brooklyn away to a gentleman who lives in an apartment with 8 other men from Nigeria, who are all working as taxi drivers attempting to help their own large families immigrate to the United States. (He happens to be the Sunday School teacher in your new congregation). Next you move back to Utah, but this one doesn't count as much cuz you also have your giant Mormon family as a network. But you do have some rockin' neighbors who are willing to help you in a moments notice (LDS or not).

And now? You find yourself once again transplanted into a new ecosystem. And it should take months and months to find a safe and secure network of friends and playdate givers, right? Wrong. You've met the CEO of the local hospital. The high school football coach. Several professors at the local technical college. And a handful of mommies who already attend the local library with you and your kid for pre-school story time. How did you manage this so quickly (it's been less than 3 weeks)?

Church.

You attend church each week. And so do they.

I had a friend once ask me how I found a church so quickly after moving to Brooklyn? I was baffled by that question. I just looked it up in the phone book was my answer. (This time around we located it via the internet). But she answered back: "Oh? It took me months to find the 'right' church. I finally found a building that was pretty enough, and a pastor that I liked, and a time that was good for me...."

Hmmmm...

We met in an old Longshoreman's Union building on Court street. It barely had windows and we were a little bit scared to venture into the basement for fear any corpses might be found... But still it was CHURCH for us. There wasn't any choosing to do. We just knew where to show up and they all just knew how to help us.

And this takes place in Australia, Malaysia, and Zambia. It just does.

That's how cool it is to move to a new place.

(Are we wearing RED today....Hmmmm? You KNOW who wears red

More Church Chats HERE.