Church and Chocolate

July 13, 2008

I was awakened this morning to a cool breeze and the sound of horse hooves clip-clopping on the pavement outside my window. What a lovely way to wake up!! My mom and I went with the Dagens to Neffsville Mennonite Church. At one point during the sermon my mother leaned over and asked me if the Mennonites believe in predestination, based on something the pastor said. The short answer during the sermon was “no.” A longer explanation followed in the car this afternoon.

After church, the two of us took off to the mall and then to an outlet mall. We found some fun things (like shorts and a hat for my Guatemala trip) and then found Amish Stuff…that was really the name of the store. I had been wanting to see Hershey, PA, so we decided to drive the 20 or so miles and look around. During the trip, 2 fun things happened. First, we drove through an AMAZING thunderstorm. It absolutely poured and the lightning was spectacular. Second, we were listening to some songs on a Christian radio station. (Not the “fun” part yet…) The announcer came on between and said coming up was the Clydesdale…Choir. Both my mom and I thought of Clydesdale HORSES! I was picturing horses singing and she was just picturing the horses.

When we got to Hershey we drove through the campus of the Milton Hershey School. A former co-worker of mine is a house parent there. Her family is on vacation, but I wanted to check out the school. We then drove over to Hershey’s Chocolate Town and had a light dinner. It was crazy busy because of the rain driving everyone indoors, but it was interesting. I did have Hershey Chocolate Milk and Chocolate Barbeque Sauce (not together.). The sauce didn’t taste much different from other BBQ sauce. In the gift shop there was a little boy with his parents. He was about 3 years old. They showed him some stickers that had his name on them and he exclaimed, “They knowed me, Mom!” I just looked at the mom and smiled. (Of course, they got him the stickers!)

Tomorrow we head up to Ithaca to see Molly.