September 20, 1998

GO TO THE SHELTER

I didn't think I would find a church in Carrolton, GA for the Wednesday night prayer service so I chose to just go through town and find a place to camp out. On the way to GA 27A a few miles south of town, I came across a small Baptist church and decided to stop. I got there about fifteen minutes before the service started. The pastor was away at a Camp Meeting.

The people in the congregation had been friendly to me. It was a pretty good service. I enjoyed it even though the guest pastor's sermon was sort of long. My impression of the church changed afterwards when I asked if there was a way for me to camp out near the church for the night.

I had to wait for about twenty minutes while the deacons who were there debated on whether I could camp out on church property. There was a fague offer to get me a room at a nearby motel but the offer fell through because nobody knew how the pastor did these things.

What they finally came up with was a classic "pass-off Christian" maneuver. They said that I should find my way over to the police station so that I could be referred to the local shelter. This really hurt me because the guest pastor in his sermon used James 2 to show that we had to help out neighbors and brothers and sisters in Christ. I didn't want to take the risk in trying to go back into Carrolton to find the police station because I didn't want to get into another situation of being attacked and robbed.

Before I headed out in the dark, one deacon who stayed on slipped me twenty dollars. I headed out eastward in search of GA 27A using my helmet light. After riding about two miles, I found some place to camp out in the woods. It might be hot in the tent though because the temperature after dark was still seventy degrees.