“Well, hello, Bill. I haven’t seen you for a good while. How are Janice and your daughter?”
“Doing well, parson; we’re all doing well. Melinda starts high school next year.”
“My goodness,” exclaimed the parson. “It seems like only a couple of years ago she was in pre-school at The Church in the Valley.”
“I know what you mean, parson. Time sure does fly.”
“It’s going to fly even faster now,” the parson suggested. “You probably haven’t realized college is only a couple of blinks away.”
“Please, parson, don’t put any more worry wrinkles on my face.”
“How are things at the church?” the parson asked.
“O gracious,” responded Bill an obvious enthusiasm coming to his face. “I think we’re really beginning to make progress.”
“That’s wonderful, Bill. Last time we talked you were a bit discouraged. What’s happened?”
“The latest thing has been the Vacation Bible School. We finished last week and it was a great success.”
The parson started to interject a comment but Bill continued on in an excited flow of words.
“We put out a lot of flyers in the community, and we put up some of those real estate type signs at the entrance to every neighborhood. And we just had a really tremendous turnout.”
The parson again started to offer a compliment, but Bill just kept on going.
“It was terrific. You know that Tabernacle of Brought-In Sheaves down the road had Bible school the same time we did. And who would have thought it, but we beat them in the number of kids. I know because I was curious and I took the time to drive past them each night during our sessions. They didn’t have half the cars there we did. I watched the number of kids out on the lawn playing. I tell you, parson, we had two or three times the number of kids at our Bible school as they did. We sure topped them on this. It was just terrific.”
Once again the parson started to say something. Bill continued.
“How many did you have at Bible school, parson?”
“Oh, I guess we had around thirty-five or forty. It wasn’t a big group, but it was a real good turnout for our little church.”
“Well, we beat you by a lot, parson. We could have gotten your whole Bible school in one class of ours. We had well over a hundred in our school. Better luck next time.”
The parson smiled at Bill’s glee of winning a game the parson did not know was being played.
“I take it you had a lot of new kids from your community,” said the parson.
“That’s my point, parson. That’s my point. We had lots of kids from the community. That’s why we beat out the other churches. No one has come close to our numbers.”
“Tell me about some of the new children who came,” the parson said.
“Tell you about them; what do you mean?”
“I mean tell me about them. Were they well-off, poor, from the local school or across the county?”
“Well, I don’t know about that, parson.”
“Well, how about telling me some of their names.”
“Tell you their names. I don’t know their names. Why in the world would you want to know their names?”
“I was just wondering,” said the parson, “whether this was a contest of numbers or people.”
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