Church

Like in Germany, finding a church was a difficult task but at least this time I had off-post options as well being able to drive --that helped.

My first pursuit to find a church at Ft. Riley was while I still was staying in the barracks.  I looked in a post guide and decided to give the main chapel a try.   I looked up the service times and the next Sunday I got myself all gussied up, as a good Baptist girl would do, and headed out to the main post chapel.  It was a bad experience on so many levels.

First of all, as I was finding out, the military didn't exactly know how to handle single soldiers.  That was very much the case at this particular chapel.  It was very family oriented --kid friendly, couple friendly --not so much on the single-friendly side.  Also, since it was located near the officer's quarters, many of the families that attended were officers.

Not all officers are bad and not all officer families are snobs but in this particular case, the church body in general was not very welcoming nor friendly but for the few that decided to welcome me and talk to me, the moment they learned I was an enlisted solider, I literally got snubbed.  It was by far one of the worst church experiences I ever had.  I remember one woman in particular could not have been any more obvious --as she was shaking my hand and I introduced myself, saying I was new to Ft. Riley, etc. the moment she found out I was an enlisted solider, the smile slowly disappeared from her face, she withdrew her hand from mine, looked me over from head to toes and then said, "Oh" --then just walked away from me.  That's it.  Just walked away.  I felt like I was diseased or something.  I could not get out of that place fast enough.  As soon as the service was over I hurried back to my car and decided I wasn't going to pursue any churches on post --I'd try something off post.

This very much reminded me of an experience I had when I was in high school.  Having recently been saved and coming from a Catholic upbringing, I had no clue on how to find a church, what to look for, etc.  So I drove around my town, looked for churches and wrote down the names of any I found of interest.  I then went home and looked them up in the phone book and called to get service times, etc (you know, before there was such a thing as "google it").  This one particular church I went to I arrived for Sunday School and asked someone to point me to the high school class or youth group (but being so new to church, I might not have used that particular verbiage) and I got a blank stare.  A few confused people directed me to this person, that person --until finally a nice gentleman took me into an empty classroom and explained they really didn't have anything at their church for someone like me ---he asked where my parents were and I told him they did not go to church.  He asked me, "What exactly do you want?"  Huh well --I just want to come to church, kind sir.  Blank stare.  He asked me to sit tight so he could get some information for me.  He then came back and said something like, "We really don't have a class for you and as much as we'd like to have you part of our congregation, we just think it would be best if you found a church better suited for you.  However; if you really just want to stay here, after you've been here for several weeks and we see you're serious about church, we'll work on getting a class for you or something --but until then, maybe you can just come for morning service."

Oh, okay well --I stayed that Sunday and did not go back.

I didn't have the best of luck with finding churches and Ft. Riley proved to be equally as challenging.