A moment from my summer missions trip to Page, AZ. Cast: Doug and Terry were some of the leaders. Ginny was the cook.

ON THE BUS BACK TO LAS VEGAS

After nearly four hours with only snacks from Ginny, Terry stood up in the front of the bus and addressed us with uncharacteristic semi-sternness.

“We’re about 20 minutes from where we’re going to eat lunch,” he said. “Now, we expect you all (youth, I mean) to act like young ladies and gentlemen, because we’ll be eating at a casino. When we go in you will follow Doug up the stairs to the restaurant, and no one will go anywhere near the machines or card games. We stopped here on our trip earlier this year, and they offer an all-you-can-eat buffet for about five dollars, which is better than most anywhere else.” Without missing a beat, he added, “This is your chance to get some decent food for a change.”

There was a collective “O-o-o-o-h,” throughout the bus, as we all grinned at the low blow and craned our necks toward Ginny’s seat in the back. She grinned back and covered her face with her hands the way she always does when we tease her. She really is an excellent cook.

Now, my dad and I have had a thing where we don’t patronize establishments that serve alcoholic beverages. Weird, maybe, but it’s a stand we take. (For a biblical parallel, see the story of the Recabites in Jeremiah 35.) So I started praying that there would be a McDonalds or something at the same exit that I could walk to, and wondering whether I should go tell Doug what I was about, and what he would do, and wanting to be as discreet as possible.

The bus driver and I ended up directly across the street at McDonalds, where I overate a super-sized Big Mac meal. I had forgotten how good a Big Mac was. The driver and I didn’t sit together, though I imagined if we had, it might have been one of those Divine Appointments, where it ends up impacting lives for eternity. So thus it became a depressing missed opportunity; like in the song Well Done.

The group was twice as long in the casino as the forty-five minutes Terry had estimated to me, and when Chelsey plopped down across the aisle from me, I asked her how the food was.

“Crappy,” she admitted matter-of-factly. And others agreed.

“Really.”

So I guess Pastor John was right when he told me (after a similar situation) that if I have a conviction about something, I should never be afraid to say so, and to stand alone. Yet another lesson learned; and I seem to learn them in the strangest places, too.