Our Monday

MORNING:
Woke up, saw the price on the breakfast buffet ($10??? what???) so trolled around Roanoke desperately trying to find breakfast. We finally went out of town to get to a McDonalds - surely they are open on Labor Day? - and ate there for a bit. It began to rain, and a little disappointed, we drove to nearby Salem, which we have heard is a better place to live than Roanoke proper. On the way we wandered into a Kmart to get a desperately needed umbrella. We walked around a bit, found a few magazines with apartment/housing prices, a local newspaper, and eventually a local coffee shop. We got some hot beverages - it was still rainy and cold - and settled down to learn more about the area. We found some reasonable prices and then walked around Roanoke college to get a feel for the area. We then drove to an apartment park, tried to get into a YMCA, and then decided to head to the nearby D-Day memorial.

AFTERNOON:
At this point I (Sara) was definitely tired and disappointed. We hadn't found any good inspiration or connections in the area, especially no churches, and this search was becoming discouraging. We came to the DDay Memorial, which also houses the Bedford welcome center. Bedford is a small town, however it lost the most people per-capita on DDay, hence the location of the monument. There we finally met some friendly people, who told us all about their town! That lifted my spirits, and then we headed on to the monument. It is quite impressive, the first monument I've seen to incorporate real sound, and memorializes the event quite well.

What you aren't hearing are the random up bursts of water, symbolizing the bullets.

Up close.

 



We stopped into the gift shop to find a magnet and ran into quite the fellow running it! He had grown up in Bedford, then left Bedford, then came back for the exact reasons he left. It is a quiet community! He then gave us recommendations for a good restaurant and we were on our way.

The restaurant was an old train station with excellent food at wonderful prices! (things are indeed cheaper down here!) I had an "Almond Joy Salad" which included coconut, almonds, and white chocolate as toppings. It was g.o.o.d.

Yummy Bread!

We trolled around "Centertown" Bedford, wandering into the general store. There we had a wonderful chat with the people who owned it, who moved from the DC area in order to have a safe place to raise their kids. After leaving we wandered around, and the man from the gift shop drove by and honked! We are already becoming locals apparently...

EVENING:
As we were leaving the area, we reflected on how nice the towns were, however we still hadn't been able to locate a church. All the churches seem to fall into either Baptist, fairly liberal, or pentacostal churches. As presbyterian/anglican/non-denominational folks, we still hadn't found something we were comfortable with. I pulled up my iPhone as we were driving and typed in "Anglican Church" in the map app, just to see what would come up. Low-and-behold, there was an AMA (anglican mission in america) church just up the road! We popped by there, however it was closed. Peeking in we saw a sign up table for "WEiRD Groups, because normal isn't working any more." We both had to laugh!

On their website, which I again was seeing through my phone, we saw they were a church plant from another Roanoke church! So we drove another 30 minutes to that church, and eventually found it. A much larger church, we saw it was open and wandered around to the side to sneak in. There we were greeted by quite a few people, as there was a fairly large recovery group session going on. We explained our situation, and a friendly fellow showed us all around the church, told us all about their experiences (another northern VA plant!), and invited us to their worship service that night. We also met his wife and the small-group pastor! Wowsers. What a blessings!

So now we are feeling fairly comfortable with the area - of course no decisions yet - however it's nice to know there is a place to plug in if God calls us here!