Henry texted his mom to let her know where I was, and I texted Ty. I had already sent her a text when I left the ranch, and I just added that I was going to be getting back later than I thought. She wasn't awake yet, and I knew she wouldn't respond. I did my best to explain clearly over text, even though Donna was asking me questions from the front seat while I was composing it.
The lady at the donut store was waiting for them, and she had their order prepped before we made it to the register.
"Do you want anything?" Henry asked.
"Oh, no, it's okay," I said, shaking my head. I had no purse and no wallet. I did have a way to pay from my phone, but it was a small shop, and I wasn't sure if they could even do that.
"What about a breakfast sandwich?" he asked.
I gave him a little shake of my head and made a face like I was fine. He gave me a look like I should change my mind, but I just shook him off.
"I'll take some water," I said.
"Not even juice or coffee? I'm paying."
"Yeah, I would love a cup of coffee, actually, thank you."
He smiled at me when I said that, and I felt my stomach flip. Henry was as handsome as they came, and I was standing there in my barn clothes, penniless and wearing a purple smudge in the middle of my forehead.
I didn't care.
I was just relieved he wasn't mad at me.
Henry ordered me a coffee, and while we were in the truck, he reached back and gave me half of his sandwich, which was a bacon, egg, and cheese and pre-cut into triangular-shaped pieces. I was tempted to deny him, but I decided that would draw even more attention to myself, so I just took it. I felt humbled and not at all like the confident, carefree college student who used my father's credit card for anything I needed.
Everything about this whole trip had been humbling, starting with my sister not wanting to be here, and then culminating in this. Now I was eating half of someone else's sandwich for breakfast and getting charmed by a little old lady into doing things I didn't want to do.
We made our way to a small, old white wooden church building on the outskirts of Butte. It was the old school kind of church with a steeple and long wooden pews. Apparently, we were supposed to do something called Sunday school before the church service started—that was where the doughnuts came into play.
Henry took a box of them and went to Sunday school with a group of men, while I went with Ms. Donna and the second box of donuts to the area where the ladies were meeting.
There were about ten women present, and none of them were my age. Most were over seventy, and there were two girls in their early teens—it was one of the lady's granddaughters and her friend. They mostly huddled up and whispered to each otherwhile the older ladies did a Bible study about someone named Joseph who had dreams and got betrayed by his brothers.
I knew the part about the coat of many colors. I had heard of that before. It was quite interesting, honestly. I didn't know there were so many facets of Christianity besides Jesus. I didn't quite understand how it all was connected, but then they told me that these people were Jesus's ancestors and that their story pointed to and validated the fact that Jesus was who he said he was—the Son of God.
The big picture still didn't make all that much sense to me, but the story itself was interesting, and I couldn’t believe Joseph forgave them and helped them after what they did to him.
We had a ten minute break, and then we met in the main room for the church service.
There were two sections of wooden pews with a long aisle running down the center. I had never been in one of these churches—maybe when I was little for someone's wedding or a funeral, but never to church. I had seen plenty of them in movies, though.
We sat on the fifth row. Henry sat next to the center aisle, and Ms. Donna left room for me to sit next to him. She was next to me, and one of her friends, Hazel, sat next to her. There was another couple at the other end of our row. I looked around and counted twenty or thirty people total.
A man came to the front and asked us all to stand. We then proceeded to sing three or four songs together from a songbook. He would tell us to turn to a certain page, and then the piano player would play, and we would sing like we were the choir with him as our leader.
It was easy to catch onto the melody and fun to sing along. The lyrics were positive, and I sang out loud with Donna. I dropped out a bit and felt a little odd when the lyrics would mention blood as if it were a positive thing. They sang aboutblood without skipping a beat. Everyone seemed corporately thankful for blood—specifically Jesus's blood. I wasn't sure why they focused on that. They were cute little sweet old people, and the songs were upbeat and happy, but they openly mentioned blood. It was weird. They were old-fashioned, decent people, and the lyrics seemed oddly contrasting.
I didn't understand it, but it seemed harmless enough. They were happy, and it was fun to sing in a choir for a day, even if I didn't get all the lyrics. I recognized one of the songs, Amazing Grace, and I knew the tune and a few of the lyrics from it. I got into it, leaning into Ms. Donna and matching pitch with her as we sang. She loved it, and she beamed at me.
The preacher came up after that. He was about as old as Ms. Donna. He was thin, and he was wearing a brown, oversized three-piece suit with his white hair, what was left of it, combed neatly over to one side and gelled.
He started to speak, and it was like he was reading my mind about the blood thing because he told us to turn our Bibles to something called First-Peter, and then he read a section that said we had 'been redeemed by the blood of Christ'. It made sense that the church would sing about it now that I knew the blood itself was what they thought did the trick to pay for the sins of the whole world. The preacher said that there wasn’t a sin too big or a person too wretched that this blood couldn't pay for it. It was like this endless cache of sin-forgiving substance that would erase the sins of all eternity—even the ones that were happening right now. Even the ones that hadn't happened yet.
He went on to say that the only way the blood was able to work was if we believed it would—that all we had to do was believe that Jesus had shed his blood to pay for our sins, and that was enough to get us to Heaven.
He then talked about Heaven and the significance of our afterlife. He tried to give us a different perspective on how longeternity was. He said that science tells us that certain species of birds can fly around the whole earth in about fifty days. He said that we should imagine that a bird flies around the whole earth, fifty days, and then every trip, he circles around to the top of a giant mountain and ever so lightly touches his wing to the tip-top of it—just a touch. Then he goes around the whole earth again—fifty days it takes him to fly. Again, he touches his wing to that mountain. Imagine that bird doing this same routine until the sheer friction of it has caused that giant mountain to wear down to nothing.
He was silent for a few seconds, and then he said that it would take that bird quite a long time. He said that this amount of time was nothing compared to eternity.
