We have been grossly delinquent at church of late, so we
picked up a “doubleheader”, hitting the Russian Orthodox Church at 9am, then the
Kenai Bible Church at 11am. Both are
within ~200 yards of our trailer. Then Travis and I went back to the “Church of
the Sockeye River” after lunch, but that story will be for later.
No one really wanted to go to the Russian Orthodox Church,
cause it’s an unfamiliar format (ie Catholic).
I’ve been to exactly one Catholic event before (a funeral) and made a
bit of an ass of myself (yeah, hard to believe…. I know) for mistaking one of
those “God be with you” sessions as introduction/friendly moment many churches
(including our own) has. So….. instead
of saying “God be with you”, which is what everyone else was saying, I kept
saying “Howdy, I’m Shane” and grinning like a jackass eating barbed wire.
I’m definitely not cut out for the Catholic faith, cause I prefer
my singing (on note) to be separated from the sermon. It seemed like they blended the whole service
together, in a really bland, hard to follow song. This will sound prejudiced, but the Catholics
seem to be in desperate want of some black folks (better rhythm and far better
singing) in the crowd. Our own church could use more too….. now that I think
about it….
Just like my home church, the Russian Orthodox folks also
have about 15% of the membership who lack an alarm clock, apparently, cause that’s
how many came in after the 9am launch. Some of their members are really on it,
though, cause when we got there 15 minutes early, one old boy in a robe was
singing (again, flat and off key) to welcome everyone in. I’ll give them points for involving everyone
though, cause folks were saying stuff and tapping their chest the whole
session. The pastor wore a cool looking
robe that would make Luke Skywalker jealous, and he had this gold dust
distributor he kept shaking back and forth making the place smell a bit. No one slept at all (again, a departure from Protestant
churches) cause there weren’t any benches or chairs. We stood the whole time like an Aggie
football game. All in all, a fun
experience and definitely new to us.
The Kenai Bible Church experience was much more to our
normal, with dedicated singing sessions and a sermon on Acts, Chapter 2, about
the beginnings of the early church. We
ran into a guy who used to teach classes at UNT back in the late 70’s and a woman
originally from Houston. She said she much
preferred Kenai to Houston, and I certainly do too (sorry Leighton….).
After church, we ate leftovers and then the men headed to
the river for another run at the sockeye. Travis caught one after about an
hour, and did so in honor of his buddy Matt, who has caught 4 of the 5 salmon
species, lacking only sockeye. Travis
intends to catch one for himself tomorrow. J A while later, I hooked into a nice sockeye
but lost it on a line break (heartbreaker).
It was a nice fish (they always are when you don’t catch em). Fishing for sockeye is a totally different
thing. You use a ~3/4 oz weight upstream
of a barrel swivel, about 4’ of leader and a big hook with yarn tied on it. You
only “cast” out about 15’ of line, just a little up river, let it “swing” down
river “feeling” the weight bounce along the bottom. Once the rig has swing
about 90 degrees, you lift the rod (hook set) hoping to have hung one in the ~6
seconds your line was in the water. Repeat.
Repeat… repeat…. I think we were casting
about every 10-15 seconds. So, between Travis and me, fishing for ~4 hours, is
about ~2800 casts for those two hookups.
Still, we both agree it was well worth it, because we’re having sockeye
for dinner tomorrow. J
Meanwhile, the ladies walked down to the beach to see how the
dipnetting was going. Deanna shot some
video showing what life is like on the beach during dipnet season.
The ladies cooked poboy fillet mignon (hamburger patties
wrapped in bacon) for dinner, and of course, that was as good as always.
No comments:
Post a Comment