Church, a really large snake, holiday weekend

Mama and I got to go to church last night. The sermon seemed to be just for us. It was the direction and encouragement we need right now. I am sure others felt the same, but it was nice to be there in person. We have been using a cell phone to stream the services and until last night that has worked well enough. But last night the cell phone dropped the app and shut down the broadcast. Pastor was every near the end of the sermon when it happened, but it demonstrated the need to get a better system in place. The app was opened and restarted fairly quickly, but the interruption was painfully obvious. Pastor did his best to finish once the broadcast service was restarted, but you could tell it really fragmented his train of thought. Now, if you look, there are two recordings on our website – unless our foundling technicians deleted the one cut off by the interruption. So many people commented on the page about losing the service that it was impressive to me. Maybe that added to the difficulty of getting the signal started again. Maybe not. It was all good. We average about 400 hits per broadcast from as far away as Africa and India. That shows the reach of such a simple electronic app.

Immediately after church, Mama made the calf’s bottle as I changed. Sadie was ready to eat. She downed the entire bottle in a couple minutes as I tried to swat at mosquitoes. Feeding her, closing up the chicken coop and turning off the lights in the well house – where we have the chicks – is part of a normal night routine. It takes me about twenty minutes to get all that done so I was surprised when I went back inside to find Mama still in her church clothes. She was waiting on Ernie and Raylinda to come. Raylinda was picking up something from Mama and Mama did not want to be in her PJ’s when they arrived. They were taking longer than she had expected and when they did arrive, they pulled part of the way into the drive and stopped. When Mama went out to greet them, she saw why.

There was a snake that stretched almost all the way across our driveway. It was about seven feet long. Impressive. So, Mama called me out to look. When we interrupted the snake from getting where it was going, it was not happy. Since it was at a disadvantage being on the ground, it climbed up the fence and started slithering along the top rail of the fence. Showoff. From that position it made several threatening moves toward me and Ernie, but it was basically defenseless. On Mama’s insistence, I went to the shop and got a piece of 2x4 to kill the snake. I did not kill it but I knocked it out for a few minutes. Long enough to let all of us disperse. I may have injured it sufficiently that it will die from those wounds, but it is hard to know with snakes. They are very resilient. I did notice that it was very thin. Not fleshed out. It has probably just come out of hibernation only days ago and was hunting its first meal in months. It is always a shame to me to have to kill them. Snaked do us a great, albeit, unseen favor controlling the rabbit and rat population. When they get tot the chicken coop, unfortunately, they have to go.

Tomorrow is a holiday. Praise the Lord! Our observance of Good Friday. This will be an unusual Easter nationwide. Mama and I will get to attend the service but most of our congregants will attend electronically. Hopefully, we will be able to use the video camera we have at the sound booth in the back of the church for future broadcasts. A stronger broadband service was installed in the church yesterday afternoon which will allow us to live stream services for the foreseeable future. Our shut-in community is thrilled about the prospect. Pastor is okay with the idea, but he has resisted it for some time. Now it is happening. I think overall, it is a good thing. We still have a few technical items to work out, but by Sunday, we ought to be able to begin a live stream that will continue every service.

Now we just need the right people in the sound booth to handle the more technically advanced needs of live streaming.