Sunday July 4, 2010 - Portland, Oregon

We joined our friends Jeff & Manchu for worship at their church this morning - Village Baptist Church (VBC) in a suburb of Portland. We had planned to go back to Imago Dei one last time, but were intrigued by Jeff & Manchu's descriptions of VBC as a very multi-cultural church.

VBC is a large church, though apparently attendance was way down for the holiday. The service was in English, but there were Korean translations on-screen for the songs we sang, and there was audio translation into Korean available via ear-piece units for those interested. On special events translations are also provided in Chinese and perhaps Spanish, our friends told us.

I liked the general feel of VBC's approach to worship. I think they had a much more appropriate understanding that this is something different than anything else you do during the week, and they conveyed that in multiple ways. It didn't seem overly cross-cultural, despite a very impressive mix of Caucasian and Asian ethnicities. Our friends are Taiwanese, so I figure if they think it's cross-cultural, it probably is.

Afterwards we went back to their house for pizza, which the kids loved. The kids also loved that they have a Wii system, and they were able to play Wii for the first time in probably three months. We headed home, all of us kind of pooped already from our busy and fun day. After a brief down-time to regroup, we broke into the fireworks I had purchased yesterday.

Not having been raised around fireworks, they still hold a fascination for me. Probably in no small part due to my male genes also. The kids were equally excited about the afternoon's activities. I apparently succeeded in picking a fireworks collection that didn't include anything that shot into the air, and that was kind of disappointing, actually. Despite the nifty packaging and imaginative names and images on the various different fireworks in the package, they all did pretty much the same thing. They shot different colored sparks into the air to a height of maybe four feet or so. And made a ton of smoke. I felt vaguely criminal in the afternoon's events. Even though fireworks appear to be legal in Portland, I didn't hear many others going off.

That changed once it got dark.

The kids enjoyed their usual cheese & popcorn dinner before heading to bed. And then, as it began to get dark, the fireworks started in earnest. The noise was impressive, from a variety of directions and distances. Fortunately the kids are sound sleepers (and are sleeping in the basement, which provides a little more sound insulation). I no longer felt guilty about the fireworks we engaged in earlier. More a little embarrassed at their woefully small scale. Oh well. The important thing is that we had fun and didn't suffer any injuries.

Right?