After spending the night at the Roswell W/M, I didn't feel like putting any more effort into finding a church than I already had, so I thought I'd look for a Starbucks and charge my computer while listening to one of my own church's sermons. For the first time on this entire trip, I couldn't find a Starbucks within a couple blocks. Feeling fairly ambivalent about everything, I decided to just take off.

I drove for miles and miles through the flattest land, passing almost nothing on the way. Most of the time there was not a car in either direction as far as I could see, but lo and behold, I soon spotted a little white building off the side of the road in time to slam on the brakes. I should mention that I was up and out earlier than usual as my neighbor started his truck about 6-feet from my head at 6:30 in the morning and left it running for an hour. Consequently, I was up and going around 8, thus I was able to drive awhile before arriving only five minutes late for 10a Sunday School.

Luckily, five minutes late appeared to be the right time because a woman was just coming out of the main church building and introduced herself to me, then took me to the side building where they held Sunday School. There were about 10 folks there and it looked very much like the "cowboy" church they proclaimed it to be. We had a great discussion about Jesus saying you have to leave mother and father and etc., but that you will receive manifold blessings in return, both in this life and in eternity. We also talked about going out and living as Christians in our jobs during the week and not just acting good on Sunday. That's where the don't let the enemy kick your butt line featured.

At 11 we walked over to the main church building which was pretty small. Attendance was 26, based on the little wooden board that also gave last week's attendance and offering total. The pastor gave a real nice sermon and then -- the best thing of the entire morning as far as I was concerned -- they got into their "family" circle (which was all 26 of us holding hands in between pews) and sang I'm so glad I'm a part of the family of God. I can't even imagine something like this going on at my big church back home, but what a kick it would be. I really felt like they meant what they were singing. Afterward they continued to hold hands while birthdays and anniversaries were listed, then any special requests were mentioned before closing in prayer.

I had to stop before pulling out of the driveway and thank God for answering my request to find a good place to fellowship. What a cool way to answer -- out in the middle of the boonies!

For those of you who played the guessing game, you were correct. Saturday I spent a couple hours at the International UFO Museum & Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico. I have to say, after reading extensive amounts of sworn statements, I've become a believer that we're not alone... ;)

Actually, I read their entire Roswell "incident" display, which took up half the museum, and I think I can say with confidence that the government covered something up. I don't personally think it was a crashed alien ship with 4 recovered alien bodies...but I think our government is quite capable of royally messing up and then doing everything in their power to make it all go away <although I don't think they don't get away with it now as well as they used to>.

I'm not saying it would wreck my entire belief system if I found out God had created other inhabited planets and they happened to intersect with ours at some point -- I just don't happen to think that's the case. I've always thought that the UFO phenomenen is just the spiritual realm breaking into our dimension.

That's probably enough discussion about aliens, but if you ever happen to be traveling through Roswell, I would suggest a trip to the Museum is totally worth it for the laugh factor alone.