Friends at Mass

I have two new best friends. One is an 81-year old woman with arthritis who is trying to recruit me for the Legion of Mary (or trying to find the brown rice and trying to sell me a house in her neighborhood that is up for foreclosure... depending on the venue). The other looks like Joyce Meyer, is planning the women's day of prayer (mini-retreat, I guess) for the parish, and is hoping that Matt and I are the answer to her prayer for someone to get the youth group going. I pretty much know her entire life story at this point (she has five daughters, the youngest is leaving for college in PA in the fall, and she has given up working for Mary Kay so that she can go back to school to become a nurse... I even somehow know her current class schedule).

It all started yesterday after Mass when I went to sign up for the women's retreat thing. I figured it would be a good way for me to get to know some people and make a few connections. Linda (aka Joyce Meyer) was very excited to meet me and invited me to come to daily Mass the next day (since I still owed them money). Wouldn't you know it, we arrived at the same time this morning and so she sat by me. I stayed with the other old ladies to pray the rosary afterwards (at which point the Legion of Mary lady spotted me), then hung around chatting with Linda for awhile afterwards. She told me that she'd been pushing for a LifeTeen program at the parish for awhile, but right now they are only getting about 8 kids coming each week. Apparently none of the people involved, including the youth minister (whose fiancee died about six months ago... why this was relevant, I don't know), can relate to teenagers and the whole thing is pretty lame. So of course Linda has been praying for some "new blood" in the program to get things rolling, and she now thinks that we are it. Maybe we are, who knows?

Anyway, only an hour and 15 minutes after Mass started (Mass, rosary, and much talking in 75 minutes? crazy), I left to go grocery shopping, armed with two invitations to join in parish ministry and two new friends. Charlene, the older one, was also at the grocery store and so we chatted again for a few minutes. Nice lady... she also thought I was about 18 and couldn't believe that I was nearly 6 months pregnant. Is this the story of my life, or what? She thinks I could find a job teaching pretty easily, but right now I think I'm content to focus on getting Elmo into the world in one piece. I'll save the teaching for later. :-)