Journal from our visit to The First Congregational Church of Cheshire, October 4, 2009

Here is the Journal from yesterday's visit to The First Congregational Church of Cheshire.
Bob, Mark, Pam and I gathered at St. Bridget around 7:00 am Sunday morning. Jeanette planned on meeting us at the church.
We greeted each other and Fr. Stephen popped over to say good morning and wish us well and a safe ride. Bob had requested that Fr. Stephen keep our visit to The First Congregational Church in his prayers and perhaps comment at mass. Bob would mention in his opening remarks that the St. Bridget Community was keeping the members of The First Congregational in their prayers.
During our two presentations that seemed to be very well received. As we drove to the church I really didn't know what to expect with this being our real first non-Catholic presentation and we felt a bit concerned with the initial reaction to our presentation as some of the members of this church attended our presentation in New haven during the weeklong ride.
Our presentation was revised to exclude reference to "Catholic" where necessary. For instance we removed the slides pertaining to CCHD and OUA. Plus we only had a limited timeframe in which to speak, that being 45 minutes between services.
We arrived at the church without incident and waited for Cindy to greet us. She did and suggested we greet folks as they came to the service and also advised we could set up in the chapel. A couple of us went to the entrances to the church while Mark and I went to set up in the chapel. We were practically set up when we were advised that the children had a service in the chapel during the regular service and we had to take down and keep the aisle free. We did so. In fact, we were advised that between services we would have to take down an re-set up. Not ideal but we made it work.
Bob, Pam, and Mark went to the 9:00 service while Jeanette and I waited until the chapel cleared out at 9:30 and we cold set up. As we waited, there was a group of Liturgical Dancers from the National Liturgical Dance Network who were going to dance at the end of the church service. I engaged them in conversation asking if they were nervous and all. This was the first time they were at this church. They were a bit nervous but anxious to perform. I asked what kind of reception do they normally receive when they dance at churches. Fro the most part it is all positive but they admitted that sometimes this is so new to people that there is a bit of hesitation. I was anxious to see what was going to happen.
They dancers asked me why we were there and what was Brake the Cycle. That's all I needed. So I did my thing and we talked for a while. During the conversation I mentioned how we meet people on the street and when they ask us what we are doing we almost always get the response, "then you are doing this for me". As I said that one dancer in particular kind of shied away with a half smile half embarrassed look. I did not think that much of it at that time and continued talking until it was time to set up in the chapel.
We were also approached by others in the church who asked us about our mission. It was great to get those opportunities.
Jeanette and I had some difficulty get the presentation to come up and had to cal John Ryan to get his password and also to find out that two steps in the set-up instructions had been changed. Whew! Panic was beginning to set in as time was getting close.
Jeanette and I caught some of the liturgical dancing and thought it was pretty cool. The dancers were there as part of the community celebration for "World Communion Sunday".
After the service I would have to say around 25 to 30 folks attended. We had to start as peopled wandered in and really only had 30 minutes to do the presentation. We announced beforehand that we normally do a 53 minute presentation and would have to act quickly to get through this before the next service.
You know, we pulled it off and had quite a good response to our discussion. I found the whole thing quite pleasant fulfilling.
When done, Cindy thanked us and the members of the community who came and especially folks from their Outreach program.
We took everything down quickly and cleared out for the next group of children.
Jeanette and I went to the 11:00 service but cut out at 11:30 to set up again. The part of the service were there for was quite impressive and spiritual.
We did not know what to expected regarding numbers of attendees to this next presentation. We got a few members of the community but all 8 liturgical dancers attended. We presented similarly keeping their initial timeframe in mind although we did speak for a bit longer this time. All went well.
We had a couple of tweaks to the slides for these presentation one being Matthew 25. I had worked it so the words come in line by line and it really seemed to go over quite well.
Also with the elimination of the "Do we meet Jesus?" slide, the story of Lou meeting Matthew seemed to flow in much more smoothly and powerfully. I would work quite well with Rob's story about his friend Don.
After Cindy did here thing again at the end of our presentation, she focused on the dancers and asked them where each was from. As they conveyed , Stratford, Meriden, New Haven she mentioned that these could be possible cities that BTC could connect with. I took the opportunity to pass out my business cards.
While doing that the dancer that I saw was a bit embarrassed when I spoke about us riding for poverty awareness spoke out and said to me, 'you are doing this for me". I got chills when she said that. She told me she had just lost her job and was a bit nervous about her future. She said that she realized she was there for a reason, that the Holy Spirit obviously wanted her to be there to here what we had to say. She thanked me. We talked about how it felt to loose your job and I shared that feeling with her. I think that helped some. She said she was going to trust in the Lord and that she believed in her heart things would work out.
I asked her to keep in touch. I hope she does. Her name was Annette.
So we were done with our first non-Catholic presentation and we looked forward to the next.
Soon after, around 1:30 Bob, Mark and I set out on our bikes to begin the 40 mile ride to Manchester. Jeanette had another engagement so we saw her off separately. Pam was our sag support.
We were not much into the ride, about 2.5 miles, and Mark got a flat tire. He decide he would try to fix the tire himself and didn’t want Bob or I to stop biking. He rode with Pam, stopped and bought some universal tool he felt would help him fix his flat. He so wanted to do this on his own and not slow either of us down. He was being overly concerned about that.
After about 20 miles into the ride and Bob almost getting nailed by a careless driver who was a bit too anxious to get into some convenience store and cut him off, we stopped at a MacDonald's in Middletown/Cromwell area. I tried to help Mark fix his flat. Then it dawned on me. This was the tire from hell! Rob, you may remember trying to fix this flat. Either the tire was too small for the rim or the rim was too big for the tire. We had a heck of a time getting the tire off initially and then for the life of us could not, I mean, could not get the tire back on. Mark felt a bit guilty feeling he was slowing Bob and I down and decided he would just ride in the van with Pam and listen to the Patriot game.
I felt bad that Mark could not enjoy the ride.
Bob and I continued until we got to Hartford where the Silas Deane continues and the entrance to the highway was. We decided 30 miles was enough and luckily Pam had not gotten on the highway yet. We packed up the bikes and drove to St. Bridget. We were done for the day.
All in all we had a great day. Beautiful weather. A good presentation. Thanks to Kathy King for those sandwiches and cookies. Thanks so much for Pam doing support and sacrificing biking.
I look forward to the next ride.
Peace,
Lou