Dinner for Vampires by Bethany Joy Lenz

Author:Bethany Joy Lenz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2024-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

As soon as the motel purchase was finalized, Les started hosting twice-a-month church services in the conference center. Unlike the Wednesday night meetings at the Big House, these were open to the public. Dontay was the Family member most familiar with computers, so he set up a website. But these were hardly ever updated with dates and times, so the people who attended were the members of the Big House Family, plus friends and extended bio-family: Emily’s father, who visited on occasion at Emily’s invitation and was always happy to see Ed and Pam, but was clearly not a fan of Les and always avoided him; cousins of Miguel and Juana; some of Lucy’s Mary Kay friends; Kurt’s brother, who was even weirder than him. Since meeting times were ambiguous, people relied on Les to announce the dates (usually last minute) to Big House Family members, and we were responsible for telling whomever we wished to invite. It was just a way of controlling everyone’s plans. You never know when the next service will be, so drop everything when it’s happening!

The motel was experiencing similar chaos.

“There’s so much renovating that needs to be done,” Dontay told me. He was in charge of maintenance, even though he’d only ever used his hands for catching a football. “Things break every day. But I’m learning a lot! I just figured out how to fix a hotel ice machine. Never knew how to do that before!”

As the motel’s manager—a job she was given because her previous job also had “manager” in the title—Emily was facing even bigger challenges.

“Honestly, every time I make a decision about anything it seems to be wrong,” she told me. “If I don’t run everything by Les or Kurt, then there’s always a problem afterward. There was a problem yesterday about how the towels should be folded. I had asked the staff to do this double foldover thing—I did some research—and they were doing it well, but then Les thought they shouldn’t hang longways, they should be folded to look puffier and more square. They called me in for a, like, hour-long meeting about functioning too independently. And Kurt gave me a speech on presentation and hospitality and how the staff should and shouldn’t be spending their time. Apparently, my way of folding towels takes twice as long, which I don’t think is true. But they’re asking me to consult them on literally everything right now. So, it’s just hard to actually get anything done. Even though it’s annoying, the truth is that I don’t want to just run around independently, making a bunch of decisions that are outside of God’s vision for this place. So, it’s probably good for me anyway.”

That was how well Les and Pam and the other leaders had trained us… conditioned us… groomed us. As soon as we started complaining, no matter how justifiably, we caught ourselves, chastised ourselves for being so negative and spoiled and ungrateful, and turned it into a blessing—an opportunity for learning and growth.

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