We have been cut off from the internet for the last week and, as such, have had a hard time figuring out where to go to church. No one knows where to find a phone book that might list churches and worship times. None of the other park rangers were even sure there was a phone book for Beatty, Nevada, which is the closest town.
When we were in Beatty at the beginning of the week I looked up churches. There are three in Beatty: Mormon, Southern Baptist, and a Community church that says they believe in Christology (not quite sure what that means to them). Interesting choices. But remember that this is the only town within 60 miles of where we are living. So these are the only churches unless we want to travel to Tonapah (90 miles) or Pahrump (112 miles).
So Sunday morning we got up early and headed into Beatty. At the biggest business in town (the Death Valley Nut and Candy Company / Subway / gas station / hotel / RV park / beef jerky store) I asked for a Beatty phone book. The phone book had 15 pages in large print with the last four digits of the phone number. I asked the woman at the register where the rest of the phone number was, and she told me everyone in town had the same area code and exchange number.
Anyway, I found out the worship times for the Southern Baptist and Community Churches and then called the Community Church. The woman who answered the phone was very nice and assured me that it was a born-again, only preach the inerrant word of God church. Tom and I talked about it and decided to head to the Southern Baptist Church. We got there a few minutes before worship was supposed to start and there was ONE car in the parking lot. Just one. We looked at each other and drove on. Tom said I was a coward and we probably would have doubled the size of the congregation if we had gone in, but I just couldn’t face being one of five (or fewer) in the service.
I was able to find the closest United Methodist Church: 112 miles from our campground in Pahrump. How far will we drive to go to church? I guess we’ll see next week.
Beatty has about 1,000 people and it has most of the necessities: gas, bank, a small grocery store. We had lunch at a great restaurant – KC’s Outpost Eatery and Saloon. The first place we tried eating was just a saloon and people were smoking in it. KC’s was our second choice, but by far the better place to eat. We had a really good, fresh-made pizza followed by a brownie with some ice cream. It was the only meal out for us this week, so we went whole hog! Everything was fresh and homemade. Delicious.
After I finish my blog posts for the week we are headed to the small grocery store – Beatty Mercantile and Hardware. Can you tell we aren’t in Ohio anymore?
