Everything Has Changed … A Little Bit More

Last time, I wrote about moving into a new place, starting a new job, and being ordained (along with Melanie) to the priesthood in Community of Christ. I shared some photos of all but the new job. Almost three weeks have passed since then, and now I have some new photos that show how things have progressed in respect both to our home and to our new church responsibilities. If you haven’t seen my previous post, you won’t get the full effect … and the effect will BLOW YOUR MIND! Well, not really. But it adds a little bit to the experience.

Let’s begin with the new home. About a month into living here, Melanie and I love it. I really love it. I don’t know what to say about it that I haven’t said before, but I’m incredibly happy here. It feels good. In my previous post, I shared a photo of Melanie sitting in a sparsely filled living room. But then we got our federal tax return—an incredibly nice one—and went on a shopping spree, which included a new couch, a rug, a new TV, and a TV stand. Yes, we’re playing grown up, and it’s mighty fun. Here’s how our living room looks now (which still isn’t finished, for the record):

Since being ordained, Melanie and I have had the opportunity to administer communion to our congregation. This is something I’ve looked forward to since we received our calls to the priesthood. We got to the church early on March 7th, prepared the bread and grape juice, and during the worship service, blessed them and served them to those in attendance. Melanie went first, blessing the water. I got teary-eyed during her prayer. After we had served the congregation bread, I blessed the grape juice. I tell you, as a former Mormon, it’s a lot more stressful to serve communion at Community of Christ. For one thing, you don’t just hand the tray to the person sitting on the edge of the pew and let everybody pass it down the row. In Community of Christ, the priesthood serves communion to each and every member of the congregation who partakes of it. That means that, this most recent Sunday, I was holding the tray the entire time I served. That makes it more stressful in and of itself, but add to that the fact that you’ve got a tray full of little cups of grape juice—dark purple grape juice that could stain anything it touches—and the stress of working up and down the rows escalates. It was a neat experience, but a much weightier one, no doubt. I wish I had been able to pay more attention to what Melanie was doing, because that would’ve been neat. I didn’t really see her serve anyone because I was too busy tending to my own serving. I especially wish I could’ve seen her serve it to our kids, which she said was a really neat experience for her. Shucks. Anyway, a good friend snapped a photo with her cell phone while Melanie and I were serving grape juice to each other. It’s from a distance, but I appreciate that we have a photo of our first time serving communion together, and the first time in Community of Christ. Here it is: