S.S. Naz - Back In The Day

I wrote this story about my church for an assignment in 9th grade (yeah, my writing skills were a bit lacking...). But I like it. It makes me realise that my memories are fading, I don't think I'd really remember most of this now if I hadn't written it down 10 years ago!!

One of the places I have the most memories from is our church. I’ve been going to the same church for as long as I can remember. I have a lot of friends there.

Our church was very small when we started going there. There were only about 90 people. Six of them were small children my age (Andria, Apryl, Danny, Jayson, Megan and I). We did silly things like tipping over on this yellow bench that was in our Sunday school room. Apryl and Danny used to eat ants off a big tree in front of the church. They would try to get me and Andria to eat them too, and finally we did. They taste gross!

Apryl, Danny, and Jayson are a year or two older than Andria, Megan and I. They aren’t afraid to do anything. There was a fire escape stair-case on the outside of our small, yellow church. Apryl and Danny would jump off this a lot. They tried to get Andria and I to do it, but we were scared. Andria finally did after much begging. She got on the edge, jumped off, and landed on her arm. It made a cracking noise. Danny hid because he didn’t want to get in trouble. Apryl ran for help. Andria was carried off to the car. Then her dad drove quickly out of the gravel parking lot to get her to the hospital. We found out later that her arm was broken, but not too bad.

We did several silly things at church, like selling dandelions and sliding down the stair railing in front of the church. Then, when I was seven, we decided to build a new and bigger church. We moved out South Salem Nazarene Church into Western Baptist while the new church was being built. We liked the old church, and watched as it was knocked down. Shortly after that, U.S. Bank and Taco Bell went in its place.

We started exploring Western Baptist. It seemed huge compared to the old church. There was even an elevator there. Our parents told us not to play on it, so we always hid in it. There was also a bridge that went over the parking lot. It connected the Sunday school building to the church building.

Meanwhile, our new church was being built. Andria and I went down with our families to help (by this time we were eight). Our job was to pick up the sheetrock papers and these metal things that came out of the electrical system (they looked like blank quarters). When the walls were up, but there was no carpet or anything, we went through all the rooms saying what rooms would serve what purpose.

Back at the college, our church was growing fast. There were now about 10 kids my age. We still did our silly things, too. After one service, Pastor had just dismissed us, but no one had gotten up yet. Andria, noticing Pastor’s new glasses, stood up and said loudly, “Pastor, you look funny in your new glasses!” It was funny.

The day finally came to move into our new church. It was neat. Things did seem a little awkward though. Apryl tripped on the altar coming off the stage, and Andria smashed her head on a post, but her head was okay.

More and more people came. Now there are about 35 people close to my age (our youth group) and about 300 people altogether.

Kids at the old church

Originally written by Jessica - November 1995