Driving Across Texas

I went to lunch with an old friend the other day.  The fact that I had to drive for two hours to see him didn’t deter me – I enjoyed the alone time.

As always, be sure to click on the picture to see a larger version.

Driving across south Texas is easy.  There are no mountain curves.  There are no bad roads.  I can drive at 70 miles per hour (113 kilometers an hour) and watch the flat lands whiz by.  The scenery is rather boring – its flat and featureless. Of course,  if you have never seen a cow before, it might be interesting.

But, I always try to see a good photograph.  I am slowly building a collection of photos of houses of worship – not just the big cathedrals, mosques, and synagogues, but rather the whole gamut of places – from the ones where we “average” people worship, to the fanciest. 

In rural south Texas, on the edge of a mobile home park populated by Mexican farm workers, I found this little church.  Most white Americans presume Mexicans are Catholic Christians, but in this case, the little building is a house of worship for evangelical Christians.  One of the things I found very interesting was a small poster about “Our Missionary.”  This little gathering of believers in a very poor area support a woman in Ecuador.

In contrast, I found this very large church building in the city of Corpus Christi.  It takes up a whole city block, has a school, extra rooms called “parlors” attached to the main worship building and lots of carefully tended lawns and plants.  Actually, all the buildings cover an area larger than a block because there is a meeting hall for social events across the street from the main building.  The sign seen in the photo gives directions to the various buildings and functions.  I also noticed a neatly painted sign saying “Skateboards Not Allowed”, but I saw no reference to missionaries.

But the drive home wasn’t as boring as usual.  If the landscape was dull, Mother Nature made up for it with this sky.  Sights like this must be one of the reasons why people go to a place of worship – to thank God for something this beautiful.

Oh yeah - thanx for the lunch, Jeff.

Comments

[Tom Murray]

Hey Doug,

There is no greater joy to me than driving along a new path. I guess my father and grandfather instilled this in me. We drove for three days one way each summer to a family vacation site back 50 years ago. Those are great memories and lead me to drive myself when I go around SE USA. If the trip is 10 hours or less I drive instead of flying. My wife on the other hand hates to drive any distance, but we'll be driving to Washington DC and Florida this November and December.

I hope you will allow me the license to ask your readers to visit my web site that is for our foundation designed to help poor Vietnamese kids. Visit www.ThinkAboutTheChildren.org

Tom

[Russ]

Dad would have been proud of that sunset.