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Our new pastor, Ted, has been a part of our church for 6 months now. At the start of one of our prayer meetings shortly after his arrival, he threatened us all with pastoral visitation. Everyone looked at him strangely.

“Is that like going to a Wake?” I asked.

“It makes me think of a scary book by Frank Peretti,” Mike commented.

“Can you explain what you mean?” John wondered.

“Pastoral Visitation – I visit each church attender to ask about their needs and get to know them better,” Ted said indignantly.

“O.K. never heard that old school term before. Around here we just ask people if they would like to meet for coffee. It might be best to give some new terminology a try,” I recommended.

Ted did not believe me when I told him no one in our church would know what pastoral visitation meant. The following Sunday, Dale observed Ted talking to a young Marine who attends our church, asking when he could get together with him for pastoral visitation. The Marine backed up and looked around hesitantly. “What are you getting at?” He asked.

“Pastoral Visitation – visiting with you to find out your needs and get to know you better,” Ted said.

The Marine stood there and looked at him. Reluctantly, Ted said, “How about getting together for coffee?”

…And so started the great pastoral visitation joke. Ted was fighting an uphill battle, but he still insisted people knew what it meant.

A month later I was talking to a fellow Mom from school who attended a large church in our area. I told her my church was very small. “Some days I miss being in a small church,” she said. “All those things like…pastoral visitation.”

I laughed so hard, I almost fell over. “Wait until I tell Ted that I found someone who misses pastoral visitation. He’ll be so happy,” I declared.

A few weeks afterwards, the church held a thank you dinner for two local pastors who had helped us during our pastor search. When the dinner was over, one of the pastors asked Ted, “How are you doing with pastoral visitation?”

Ted called to me across the room, “Wait, wait. Mugs, there is something you need to hear.”

He now had two people on his side. Every few weeks he would announce pastoral visitation in front of the church and schedule people in for visits in their home or his. He had hoped to be done in six months.

A bit ago, I realized six months had passed and the Manrys had not had their pastoral visitation. Gabe wanted to schedule it for March 15th – “Beware the Ides of March,” but Ted couldn’t make it. We moved it up two days.

Abby hung black balloons on the mailbox, decorated the porch with black streamers, and hung a black table cloth over the doorway. Gabe made a poster proclaiming “Beware – Pastoral Visitation” and Abby made a poster declaring, “Enter at Your Own Risk.” Gabe, dressed in black, stood on the porch and waited.

Ted walked slowly toward the door, taking it all in. He stood outside on the porch scared to open the door and trying to pry information out of Gabe as to what was going to happen when he opened the door. I had the right kid outside. If Gabe does not want you to know something. He will not tell it.

Finally, Ted opened the front door and Josiah started playing the Jamaican Rumba. Zeke, who was standing on the steps, showered confetti onto Ted while we all shot off party poppers and blew noise makers. The house was filled with balloons and streamers. Zeke made a poster cheering on Pastor Ted, and Josiah made one declaring our great love for Pastor Ted. We had candy, pretzels, and a Pastoral Visitation chocolate dribble cake. It was a real party. We had bought Ted a special spongebob balloon with Happy Pastoral Visitation Day written on it.

Spongebob is another ongoing joke between us and Ted that stems from a game of charades. Ted needed his family to guess “pants.” He thought the best route to take was getting them to guess spongebob squarepants. The memory of his charade actions periodically sends us Manrys into hilarious laughing fits.

I never expected pastoral visitation to bring on laughter as well.

Our church is so small, our youth group consists of Josiah and Abby. We have no youth pastor, youth meetings, or youth trips to speak of. Occasionally the college and career age group of singles at our church feel sorry for Josiah and Abby. One time they invited them to go bowling.This meager amount of social activity does not bother Josiah. (He had to be talked into the bowling.) Abby, however, makes other plans.

Last weekend, Abby traveled with her friend, Chelsea’s youth group to West Virginia for a ski trip. Abby joins her friend for youth events whenever she can talk me into driving the forty minutes it takes to get to Chelsea’s church. When Abby started high school (located 30 minutes south of our house), I gave her the same instructions I gave Josiah: No making friends with kids from Culpepper (50 minutes southwest of home). Josiah accepted the spirit of this law and made friends with guys who live close to the school. Meanwhile, Abby adhered to only the letter of the law and made friends with two girls who live a meager 10 minutes east of Culpepper.

These are two of her “Best Friends.” Abby has lots of “Best Friends” and no matter how many times Josiah and Gabe tell her that everyone cannot be her “Best Friend,” she always seems to exceed a rational number. Her brothers drew the line when she referred to someone she had not invited to her birthday party as her best friend. She has one ally in all this: Zeke, who also has a great number of “Best Friends.”

For me, sending Abby off to a ski trip is fraught with worries. The girl is a bit of a klutz. I tried to give her instructions on how to fall without hurting herself, how to get off a ski lift without getting knocked down, and how to prevent frostbite.

Mostly, I prayed.

On Friday evening, she had a long drive in a van over winding mountain roads with winds gusting 40mph. The group didn’t arrive until 11:15pm. It was not a good night; Abby is my motion sickness child. Upon their arrival, I received the following text: “Finally here. I hate winding roads.”

Once they arrived, they all were issued their ski equipment. This took a long time. They didn’t get back to their cabins until 1am. Unfortunately, the girl’s cabin had no heat and the girl’s luggage and sleeping bags were somewhere along a mountain road on the back of a broken down trailer. It was a cold night for the girls. Meanwhile, the boys heat could not be turned off and they spent the night sweating.

The food, according to Abby was dismal and made some girls sick. Abby subsisted on toast.

Thankfully, she had a lot of fun skiing and had only two major wipe outs. One was caused by someone crashing into her and the other happened when she was blinded by the snow machine and slid into a tree. She is black and blue and sore, but no bones were broken. Praise the Lord!

The youth pastor’s theme was John 10:10 “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” He talked about the monsters that come to destroy your life and he had made cardboard monster cutouts to represent different themes. Abby said it was a bit odd, because the monster cutouts strangely mirrored the members of the worship team.

“You should see the amount of gear the worship team brings,” Abby told me in disbelief. “When our church goes to the campout, Mr. Humphrey brings his guitar and song sheet printouts. They brought an entire sound system!”

The best part of these youth events for Abby besides hanging out with her “Best Friends” is they always give out t-shirts and the girl, like her father before her, loves free t-shirts. No matter what event I send her to, she somehow manages to get a t-shirt. This fall she went up to a youth conference with her school. After the meeting, the kids walked around college recruiting booths. Somehow, she picked the booth that gave her a free t-shirt.

It is good to know that youth events haven’t changed much over the years: uncomfortable conditions, sketchy food, moments of peril, things breaking down, sermons on peer pressure, and a t-shirt to fondly remember it all.

The ladies in my church love to have a tea once a year. We dress up and have tea with cucumber sandwiches and scones. One year it was a Mother’s day tea with each table having a unique tea set. Another year, we went to a tea shop and wore fashionable hats. This year, mountaineer Mary hosted the tea and she looked and acted so fancy one would never have guessed, earlier in the week, she and her son helped a stranded traveler descend Old Rag Mountain.

We all attempt to play along, but we do occasionally give ourselves away as not quite up to the proper tea lady status.

When the conversation at my table turned to Carol’s visit to her sister Laura, who is studying vocal performance at university, we were all quite attentive. Then, Carol told us enthusiastically of opera and arias and the progression of thirds and screens. We were at a tea, of course. Certainly, we knew of opera. I casually looked around the table and discovered my fellow tea mates with the same smiles plastered on their faces and the same glazed, slightly confused looks in their eyes.

We may not be legit, but we can certainly put on a good show.

Tea ladies?