We went to my church, Community Friends Church, yesterday.  In the “programmed” Friends meetings, there is a time for open worship.  This is a designated five or ten minute period of silence where people can talk about what God is doing in their lives, ask for prayer, read a passage of scripture, sing, or whatever they feel moved by the Spirit to do.  So I shared about coming to the point of thanking God that we won’t be able to come back to Wagon Trail Campground next year and that my life is in upheaval and I don’t know what He’s doing, but deciding to trust Him.

After the service I was talking with the pastor when her husband and Mark brought a man, named Scott, up to tell me he was aware of a place that was in need of Housekeepers.  He had written the directions to the place on the back of his church bulletin and gave it to me.  More about that later…

There was a time of refreshments after the service and then we all traipsed about a block and a half to the shores of Green Bay for something I have never even heard of before, let alone witnessed… a Quaker baptism!  The reason this is so rare, for those of you who aren’t familiar with Quaker theology, is that traditionally the Friends eschewed anything that smacked of ritual, to include Communion and baptism.  In fact, the “unprogrammed” Friends meetings are devoid of music, pastors, programs, and all the usual trappings of “church”.  “Programmed” services are similar to other churches except for the differences I mentioned above.

It was the man who had given me the job lead, Scott, who was being baptized.  My pastor, Nancy Bontempo, overheard me mention to someone on the way to the beach that I hadn’t heard of a Quaker baptism before and she told me that she had called a Quaker minister in California before agreeing to do the baptism.  Her friend told her that some Quaker churches are beginning to adopt Communion and baptism, so she decided to go ahead with it.  She asked Scott if he believed that Jesus is God, and he said yes.  She asked if he believed that Christ came to die for his sins and rose again, and he said yes.  And she asked if he would dedicate his life to following Jesus and he said yes.  He gave a bit of his testimony and read a Bible passage he said was meaningful to him.  Then Nancy’s husband, Dave, waded out into the water with him and baptized him.

Mark and I had packed a picnic lunch for ourselves for the first time since we’ve been married, and having discovered the little park next to the beach behind the church, we had our picnic there.  It was a beautiful day for a picnic!

Now to pick up the original story, we drove straight to the hotel in Fish Creek that Scott had told me about and I filled out an application.  Today I went for an interview.  I was interviewing with the head of Housekeeping for the hotel, Cheryl, when she mentioned the affiliated condos.  Scott had said I should apply to work in the condos, so I asked for more information about that.  Cheryl said she would get the condo Housekeeping manager to interview me, but not before she tried to entice me a little bit more to work for her.  She had some good enticements, but the condo Housekeeping manager, Trudy, had some better ones.  She said I could have Sundays off and that she would start me at $13/hour rather than the customary $12/hour.  I didn’t get that in writing, so I hope she remembers those promises by next spring!

Now the only thing we need is a place to stay for all of next summer.  Cheryl gave me the names of a couple campgrounds we might try.  There’s one only a couple miles from the hotel and they have seasonal sites, but there are several people on the waiting list ahead of us.  The owner of the campground took our names and was fairly encouraging though.  She said that sometimes she calls down the list before she finally gets someone to respond.  It could be she would get to our name with an available site.  We should know by sometime next month I think.

In the meantime, there is a state park behind the hotel and condo that allows camping, so we went to check that out.  When Mark was figuring there are 1814 RV sites in Door County for him to do business with, he didn’t have any information about the state parks.  We asked at the entrance if they had any seasonal sites and they don’t, but in the process we found out they have 200 RV sites.  That opened up some new possibilities for Mark.  He dropped me off at home and began going from campground to campground, including the state parks, to drop off his business cards and talk about what he plans to do next summer.  He found 123 RV sites in another state park plus 89 in a campground that wasn’t listed in his book of campgrounds, bringing the total to 2226 RV sites in Door County that we know of.  He could be very busy next year!