My family goes to church in town at the The Hopinatta Worship center. Now this church probably ain’t one you have ever seen, or maybe you have. We don’t have any kind of denomination, which means everybody is welcome no matter where else you have gone in the past. We have church on Sunday, Sunday night, and Wednesday. We have a candelight vigil on the Saturday before Christmas, and all that.

It still kind of feels baptist in a way, but its a little bit full gospel and Pentecostal thrown in, and preacher calls it interdenominational. Me, I just call it church and while I do love Jesus and all that, my favorite part is the constant dinner on the grounds, the Wednesday night ice cream suppers, and the fact that almost all my friends from school go here. I also like the summer youth camp, but I already told y’all about that.

So this one Sunday, we had a church from out of town visiting us; there were about 50 extra people from this little Baptist church from a little town in Arkansas. They were passing through, and somehow they got invited to attend church with us. We had to put out a bunch of folding chairs, and the ladies ordered a bunch of pizza and chicken to feed everybody. Dinner on the grounds baby! This was in the fellowship hall because of the cold though, but free food that you don’t eat at home is a big plus!

That Sunday morning the guitar player on our worship team must have had a little trouble with his guitar amp, because it was kind of loud. Our worship services are a little loud sometimes, but folks don’t mind at all. Them that can’t hear always sit up front, and the young people like it loud. This service was way too loud though, even for us kids.

This little blue haired lady from that Baptist church in Arkansas was sitting in the back, and she had her a high beehive hairdo, and you could tell she was judging the music, and she kept staring at the guitar player. She was muttering under her breath, and I could tell she did NOT approve of that worship music, no sir.

Well the guitar player must have noticed it too, because he started looking just a little aggravated. All of our church musicians are really good musicians; except for Sister Rinky Tink. She only plays piano in the quieter services every third Sunday; some of the old folks like a traditional music service with just a piano. Something for everybody, but folks seem to like it all, and I do too.

Directly after the worship team quit playing and the preacher went up, the guitar player walked off stage quick, and went down straight off to that little old lady who was judging him, and gave her a big exaggerated welcome, and we didn’t see him again until service was over. I guess he was trying to fellowship and be nice.

But we had service that night too. Now I heard this from Stinky, who heard it from a deacon that was telling the story to somebody else later. Turns out that guitar player decided to pull her leg, since she was obviously judging him hard, while he was playing onstage. He has really long hair, and you know he didn’t learn how to play electric guitar like that in no church.

While he was greeting her after the Sunday morning service, he had told her that she really needed to come back that night, and get a good seat, because it was rattlesnake night! We all noticed that she had a surprised look on her face, when she left with the rest of her people. Us kids made sure to watch and see if she came back that night to Sunday evening service, and her Arkansas church came back, all of them.

Mamaw always likes to come early, and while me and Stinky and Tank were waiting on Jasper to show up, that little beehive haired lady walked in with her people. The guitar player must have been waiting on her, because he ran down from the stage with a brown paper sack and was looking all excited, pretending like he was wild eyed. He went straight to that beehive haired lady, and we saw what happened.

When he got to her he told her in a loud voice; “Whoo hoo ma’am, y’all are in for a treat! I told you this morning it was rattlesnake night!” He quickly thrust that paper sack at her after opening it. He had put a bunch of cables in it and hollered, “Yeah its snakes! Reach in there and get you one!” He tossed an extension cord on her and that woman screamed like he was killing her. She almost fainted; and we heard later that Preacher got all over him for that.

Folks ought not to get a notion in their head about another person, without meeting them first. I don’t think that lady will ever come to our church again neither.