Day 8

May 2nd That was a glorious sleep in! After a relaxing breakfast I took a 15 minute shower and had the water running the whole time. It was nice to shave my legs, be in jeans, do my hair and put on some mascara. Also, today is the perfect opportunity to wash my bedding because I will have to re-make the bed for the next week anyways. Off to church! I went to the Ottawa Mennonite Church located at 1830 Kilborn Avenue with Pastor Don Friesen. There was a youth/Sunday school class at 10am where we had a presentation from a guest about Haiti. She showed us pictures from Haiti before and after the earthquake. She also gave us an idea of what life was like before and now after the disaster. I was looking around in the room occasionally and the atmosphere is much different from our church. The room had grade 4-whatever in it and the young kids were very well behaved and calm for the whole presentation. There were not a lot of young people at all in fact I don’t think there were more than 20 young people in the room. Their church building is smaller than ours and the youth room is about 1/3 or less the size of ours. However when I got into the sanctuary and looked around there, I saw so many kinds under the age of 6, it was crazy! It was so cute to see all the babies and toddlers with their parents. I felt right at home as soon as I saw the “Sing the Story” and our blue Worship Hymnal on their chairs. Oh, and they don’t actually have pews, they just set up rows of chairs and the congregation is full. It seems like there is a strong sense of family in this church and I was really happy to be there. The thing that I as a visitor found most useful was a pocket at the back of their hymnal that had papers in it. There was a two sided pink sheet with one side for regular attenders and the other for visitors. You could give your name, address, e-mail and phone number and request to be kept in the loop with the church’s activities. This morning they announced that the CMU choir was coming to do a program. I met the song leader and we immediately found connections (good ol’ Mennonites lol) He came from Winnipeg and knows a lot of the music people at the Universities and such. I am going to keep this pink slip that I found and bring it back to our congregation. Maybe we can have some sort of a system like this for our visitors. The only bummer about going to church was that we had a boxed lunch waiting for us when we came back. These boxed lunches are packed with carbs, salt and fat. I was so hungry when I got back that I actually ate the entire salty sandwich and then waited for my stomach to reject it.