Just Like Kevin Bacon

The Mennonites have this thing called The Mennonite Game, which can be summed up thusly: Put two Mennonites in a room together, and within 10 minutes, they will have figured out how they are related.

I’ve seen it in action and it’s fascinating. Having come to the Mennonites from another denomination, I can’t lay claim to being related to many of them, but I like to play a version of the game every so often.

Back in 1993, when we were getting ready to move to Montana, my grandmother pulled out one of her church periodicals and pointed to a blurb about the Missouri Synod Lutheran church in Kalispell. “Promise me that you will go to this church when you get there,” she said. Being the dutiful granddaughter, I did as my grandmother asked. The church had a wonderful moms’ group run by a lady named Nancy, who became one of my other “moms” (I have several). Nancy and her husband are DD#2’s godparents.

The church in Kalispell grew enough that they decided to start another, smaller church, out in our fire district, pastored by the former minister of the town church. By that time, I had already started attending the Mennonite church, but I knew several people who attended the Church at Creston, as it is called, and Nancy and her husband were among them.

I attended a memorial service yesterday at the Church at Creston. Our fire department’s former assistant chief, Bob, died in June. He and his wife were members there. Being at that memorial service was a weird intersection of two very different parts of my life. I went in with my friend, Pat, and her husband, a retired member of our fire department. We all go to the Mennonite church. After the service, the three of us were standing in line for food when I spotted Nancy. Nancy and her husband had been good friends with Bob and his wife. She came over and I said, “I need to introduce you to someone.” I motioned Pat over and introduced her to Nancy and said, “Nancy’s granddaughter goes to Bethel College.” (Bethel is a Mennonite college in Kansas and obviously doesn’t limit itself to Mennonite students.) Pat said, “Our son graduated from Bethel!”

A few minutes later, we were all seated at a table with the former pastor of the church in town—who is now retired from pastoring the Church at Creston—and he and his wife asked me how the girls were doing. I said that DD#1 was married and living in Alaska and I added, half-jokingly, “She married a good Lutheran boy—he graduated from St. Olaf.” The gentleman sitting next to me—who is the pastor of the Missouri Synod church in Whitefish—said, “I graduated from St. Olaf!” We also talked a bit about the ELCA church where I play piano for Lent and Advent.

[Our DSIL’s mother’s maiden name is the same as the name of the pastor of the Whitefish church, but I didn’t think to ask if they were somehow related. I’ll have to check into that.]

Despite the sadness of the occasion, it was wonderful to sit and catch up with people I hadn’t seen in many years. And I am reminded again just how small the world really is, if you’re willing to make an effort to find out.

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It is a blessedly cool 58 degrees outside and we are waiting for the rain to arrive. I took my first batch of dried cherries out of the dehydrator yesterday and started a second batch. (That’s a half-gallon Mason jar, so it’s more than it appears.)

I also cut up some zucchini and dried that, too. I’ll either throw it into soups this winter or rehydrate it for chicken treats.

I finished another apron, the one with the cute chef fabric.

The reverse is the same black and white gingham as the pocket on the front. I use a lot of polka dot prints, but I am developing a fondness for gingham.