Orchard Grove Christian Women's Fiction Box Set (Books 1-3) by Alana Terry

Author:Alana Terry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian women books, christian women fiction, religious fiction, Religious fiction eBooks, Christian romance
Publisher: Firstfruits Publishing
Published: 2018-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 27

I find a pew toward the back in case I have to leave early. Just showing up here has got me exhausted. Not to mention dealing with Joy and my mom’s friends, all of them as hungry for gossip as Oliver Twist and his orphanage friends were for their gruel. I’ll be lucky if I make it past the first few songs.

While one of the elders reads the announcements (which are right there in the bulletin for literate congregants to read for themselves), I glance around. The church’s women’s missionary league has always done its best to overcompensate for the building’s somewhat bland exterior by overloading the inside with every single fake flower, gaudy candle arrangement, and ornately framed piece of junk you can find on clearance at the local craft store. It’s even worse now at Christmastime, with every single windowsill laden with garlands and fake holly, and the maroon carpet underfoot littered with artificial pine needles that have fallen from the arrangements.

The piano begins, the exact same hymns I remember from my childhood and a few Christmas carols sprinkled in. Since we never sing through more than one or two verses, we can cram in eight or ten songs. I’m glad when the music dies and we can finally sit down. How did standing during a fifteen-minute set turn into such an exhausting ordeal?

The pastor walks up to the front, all smiles. It’s a new guy. Hasn’t been here for more than a few months, but Mom’s told me enough about him I could deliver his job performance summary at the next church business meeting. Pastor Greg, he’s this young man originally from Orchard Grove. Part Latino, part Native, which isn’t a mix you see too much around here. He graduated around the same time I did, but he was homeschooled, and back then the homeschool/public school divide was even more impassable than the barriers separating out the whites from the Latinos, the Latinos from the Natives, and the Natives from everyone else.

Which is why I think it’s funny Mom loves living in Orchard Grove so much. Maybe she enjoyed the fact that Daddy was the only Chinese gynecologist the town had known. Everyone’s searching for some claim to fame, right?

Pastor Greg opens with a little inspiring story he could have picked up from a Pilgrims magazine, and I find myself wondering how much longer the church will keep him on. Orchard Grove goes through pastors like some folks go through casseroles at a potluck luncheon. I think they’ve had five just since the time I graduated high school. There was one pastor run out of town, not because he had an online counseling business per se, but because he sometimes talked to his paying clients on Sundays.

Another was forced to resign when his adult son, who was in his thirties or forties by then, came out of the closet, and the preacher didn’t disown him the exact same day. (That came later, by the way, just not soon enough for everyone at Orchard Grove.

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