A couple Saturdays ago Miriam and I ventured to South Bend, IN with Pastor Phil (Trinity UMC Pastor) and Andrew (Trinity UMC's youth). The purpose of the trip was originally the idea to go see Granger Community Church, which is a very successful United Methodist church in Northern Indiana. Miriam and I had planned on going up to see it before the semester was over and when I proposed the idea to Pastor Phil he was excited about it and wanted to take Andrew along as well. Once I knew the plan was a go I had to see Notre Dame's campus and all the history, as it is very near Granger.
We began our journey around 10:00 in the morning. It took a little while to get out of Hartford City because of some errands that had to be run. But after a few stops we were on our way to our first destination which was the campus of Notre Dame. On our way we got a little hungry so we stopped in Columbia City, yes that name is correct, at a Hardee's. Our stopped turned into quite an adventure as a couple minutes after we got our food the electricity all along the street went out and we had to eat our food with no lighting. I offered multiple times to eat the ice cream and shakes just to help, but the Hardee's crew declined to accept the offer on each occasion.
We finished up our lunch and headed on to Notre Dame. I was hopeful that Rudy would be there as it was my understanding the real Rudy just hangs out on campus constantly. Apparently I had heard incorrectly from my sources as we never did see him, but we did get to give ourselves a nice little tour. The bummer was that it was pretty rainy all day, not too hard of a rain but every now and then it was coming down.
Pastor Phil gave us a pretty good tour of the campus for it being so rainy. Has was familiar with the area so he showed us around and made sure we saw all of the important areas. He was very adamant about showing us "Touchdown Jesus" as he called it. I also got a sweet shot of a low flying airplane right near the "Golden Dome". It was a good tour
of the campus even though the rain brought our moods down a little. Miriam was not feeling very photogenic as you can see.
Along with those shots I got a picture of probably the fattest squirrel I have ever seen. Andrew and I were very excited about that.We finished up our campus tour and then had a to stop somewhere else I had to go while in South Bend. Of course if you know me you know that we grabbed some dinner at Chipotle before heading to the GCC.
So from there we journeyed on to Granger Community Church where we toured the building and then attended their 5:30 Saturday night service. GCC actually does four services; two on Saturday night and two on Sunday morning. It was a good experience, the only real problem was that it probably made Miriam and I a little homesick as it had some characteristics we are familiar with.
After GCC we headed back to Hartford City to part ways and call it a night.
(Authors note: the ride back from Hartford City is when I finally thought of the blog about our time in Indiana. Too bad that idea came so late....but I have been able to catch you up on the big stuff at least.)
Welp. See ya!
