Date: 2006-05-07
From: Harper's Ferry

To: Harper's Ferry
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

I got up and went to Sunday school at the Lutheran church. There was a lot of history in that building. It was the center of many battles during the Civil War and was captured and changed ownership 3 separate times. There was even cracks in the walls from where cannon balls hit the side of the building.Sunday school consisted of 3 people, myself, the pastor, who was a woman, and the guy who led it. He taught on the power of the Holy Spirit and how we are supposed to have it and weild it. The whole subject matter is pretty shady to me sometimes. What do we mean by Power? Why do we want it? A lot of the time I think we Christians focus a lot on what we can get out of Christianity rather than what it takes of us to further the Kingdom of God. With the whole subject of "Getting the Power of the Spirit" I just like to think that it shouldn't be a goal to achieve but rahter a side affect that happens as one gets closer to God. there is no checklist on how to get "power" but rather one point: Seek after God and amazing thinks will happen.So the regular church service was next and we even did communion. I felt very uncomfortable having a woman on the pulpit. I'm not totally sure how I feel on the subject but I do know that I felt at the time that it wasn't right. The congregation was small, maybe 15 people.After the service I said goodbye to everyone. The pastor was a very nice woman. I did find it odd in her lesson when she said that she struggles with the verse that says, "Wives submit to your husbands". I don't get it with women. Now easy is it to do but they make it so hard. (I'm sure I'm about to make someone mad, but I really don't care because this is my journal and you are priveleged to read it. If you don't like it, don't read, but after all, it is just my opinions and who cares about those? I digress.) =) Is says submit, not be a slave to. And the next verse says that "husbands, love your wife like Christ loves the church." So all women have to do is submit and what men have to do is sit on death row. Hmm, take your pick. And even further, until they die or make, hopefully in rare cases, the ultimate sacrifice of death for thier wife, men have to lead their wife in a servant leadership style: putting their follower's needs always above their own. If Christ is to be the man's model of their leadership style towards their wife, then selflessness to even death is what is demanded of them to do. Women have it good.So I left and went to church down the street which turned out to also have a woman pastor. She welcomed me to the congregation and told me to tell everyone on the trail that "this is the friendliest church in Harper's Ferry." I was rather shocked. What is there some type of competition between churches? It is things like that that build walls between churches when really divisions need to disappear and the body of believers needs to be one again. When at war, the best way to achieve a goal is to have different groups work together to achieve victory, not a bunch of individual parts doing what they think is right. We are at war. Some of us are holding .50 caliber machine guns, so drive tanks, some work the radar. When they all help each other the enemy is chased down and destroyed. Working separate from each other results in chaos and death: The church is more concerned with shooting at each other rather than understand there is an enemy to shoot at.So I left after the service and went and ate lunch at the Armory. After that I called Dick and he gave me a ride to the horse track where there also was a casino. Sounded like tons of fun to me. So he dropped me off and I walked in to the casino. Chaos. It was a sea of slot machines and people, robotic almost, pushing the little button to spin the wheels in hopes for something great. When nothing great came they could push it again, this time with even more anticipation than the last. It was almost like laboratory mice pushing the button that would give them a hit of crack. The mice would just keep hitting that button over and over until they died. In this case in the casino, the people would do it until their money ran out.The phychology of the place was amazing. There were no windows so you coulnd't tell if it was getting late, no clocks to tell you if it was time to leave, noises from the thousands, literally thousands, of slot machines sparking excitement, the slots told you how many credits you had left rather than how much money you had, because it is much easier to lose credits rather than dollars, there were no exit signs, and it was so easy to get lost in there. It was just quite the scene. It was amazing. I go from seeing maybe 3 people a day out on the trail to seeing a couple thousand crammed in one building.So I walked around for a while just watching most everyone lose on the slots with the occasional winner. I then went outside to watch the horse races. That was so cool. The horses were so beautiful and so fast. I had never seen a horse in full run before, it was quite the sight.I called Keri before the start of the race. She picked #5 to win, I picked #8. She got 2nd place and I got 8th, out of 9 horses. The #4 horse won and the jockey had KARI written in big pink letters on his jersey. I thought that was cool, close enough to Keri I guess.So I went back inside and ate dinner. More phychology: in order to get drink refills you had to leave the eating area, walk across the sea of slot machines, fill you drink, then walk back across. Ridiculous.So I had to do some betting, after all it was my first time in a casino. Unfortunately there wasn't any card tables, only slots. So I alotted myself $5.00 to lose. So I played for a while and got up to about $11.00 bucks, double my money. So then I said I wouldn't leave on the negative, which I did dip into but then hit bar, bar, bar and broke even again. So I quit at that point. It was a love hate relationship the casino and I had. I didn't get any of his money and he didn't get any of mine. But the break up was good. On my way out though I did get to see a lady who was playing two slot machines at once hit both jackpots for a total of about $5,000 bucks. If I would have won that I would have been going nuts, but she just sat their, unmoved, almost depressed looking as if the little she is gaining doesn't make up for what she'd put in over the years.So I left, got some groceries, grabbed dinner, then Dick took me back to the place I was staying. I ate, took a bath with dead sea salts and a beer in one hand and keri on the phone in the other. After my shower and another call to Keri I went to bed. I can't wait to see her tomorrow. She has no clue I'm coming. I can't take the anticipation much longer.---fish and chips, seasonal ale, stout - The Armory---orange chicken x2, spicy chicken, lo mein, coke, veggies - Charles Town slots and Derby---rice and bean burrito x2, fiesta burrito, beef and potatoe burrito - Taco Bell