FYI (For Your Interest)

Last week, my boss in Outreach, Jo, preached in Houma (45 miles east of Baldwin, about halfway between Baldwin and New Orleans) for UMW (United Methodist Women) Sunday. She gave a wonderful sermon on "Passing the Baton" and what an intricate maneuver that is in a relay race and how important it is for women to pass their faith on from generation to generation. After the service at Bayou Blue UMC and the requisite potluck, we journeyed to Vacherie, somewhere close to Thibodeaux, to tour a plantation. Vacherie has a tiny UMC about the size of a tract house living room which holds services the second and fourth Saturdays of the month from 4-5 pm. It is away from everything and cannot possibly hold more than twenty people. I guess that's enough. We chose to tour Oak Alley Plantation in little Vacherie, butted up against the mighty Mississippi River and fronted by two columns of 300-year old live oak trees framing the huge Big House like a canopy. Stunning! I kept expecting to bump into Rhett Butler.

Glenn Druilhet (pronounced Drew-Yet') is a gracious, aristocratic-looking African American woman who is the Director of Depot Operations at USB. Her husband went to school here along with the rest of his large family in the 1960s and 70s. He said the Methodist deaconesses (Home Missionaries) were so strict that when the Sager Brown students graduated eighth grade and fed into the high school district in Franklin, it took awhile for the rest of the kids to catch up academically.

Sunday at Trinity UMC across the street, the church drummer was resplendent in fire engine red: red shirt, red pants, red boots and red hat. Quite the sight--and sound!