Countdown to Sunset

After a very quiet night sleeping to the sound of breakers rolling in gently on the other side of the campground dunes, we rose rested and ready for THE LIBRARY!

On the way out of the campground we passed the marsh and wetlands to our west.  Tomorrow we want to visit the nature trails on the other side where the trees are.  There is also a listed historic site of perhaps thousands of years of Indian habitation, and ruins of an old plantation. Ruins!  Cool!

Edisto  Beach Library is just a mile or so up Route 174 from the campground entrance heading off the beach.  There we met Joyce, who has served as a librarian here for many years.  She loved talking to Mona about Gently USED BOOKS and especially South Carolina Low Country authors.  Some of which have visited her library before.

While there we had a question about Pat Conroy’s book, Prince of Tides, regarding its setting in Colleten County, where we are now.  She didn’t have the answer but emailed him right away.  He lives just a couple of Islands south on exclusive and gated Fripp Island. She says many authors love to get personal questions about their books and she would expect an answer from him within a week.

Outside the church office

We drove around the corner and just a little bit south to Edisto United Methodist Church.  We had called Glenda, the administrator here, yesterday and she had passed our request on to the Trustees and Pastor Scott to stay for a couple of days after we leave the beach campground.  Today we wanted to check out the parking space ourselves since we don’t often get to do that, and because it was pretty well covered with live oaks in the satellite pic on Google Maps.

We parked at what we thought was the office building, and it was. But when we opened the front door we found a meeting of ten folks around some tables. I began to apologize when what to my wondering ears should we hear but ‘Ya’ll come on in now!  Come on! Our Bible Study is just beginning!”

  

Once again we show up and are welcomed with no questions, and open arms. But then, what good United Methodist Church wouldn’t do whatever it could to help a few more souls into the Kingdom?

They were studying a great book by Carolyn Slaughter on living as a kingdom Child: Following Jesus. How the memories flooded back from that early trip to Ginghamsburg UMC in Ohio with our Hope Church leaders in 1997. Mike Slaughter’s church has continued to grow and seed other ministries since then.

Pastor Scott and the Trustee Leader Laurie (Sorry if I mis-spelled your name. I don’t know another way to spell this for a guy) affirmed that we were welcome to stay.  However we have to be able to get our 13’ tall rig under the lovely live oak limbs growing over each of their parking lot entrances. 

But we’ll give it a try when we depart the state park on Friday evening. If we won’t fit, we’re told the man who owns the local small BI-LO market will probably let us stay.  Either way, we’re worshipping with this crowd on Sunday!

Off to Whaley’s for a fresh flounder sandwich and home made fresh potato chips and then back to camp for an afternoon of beach READING. Being on any ocean beach brings back memories of taking our Jimmy and Jenny to Cape May, new Jersey, and a generation later, Tristan, Khalif and Kaream, our grandsons, there as well.  But our next stop brought back an even more poignant memory.

Our Friends, Walt and Kathy Vanderheijden, told us their favorite place to end a day is at Bay Point Beach at the southwestern tip of Edisto.  Edisto is pretty small so no great road trip from the camp ground.

The beach is lapped by a soft swell on this end of the island, and the flow turns gently inland to be very much like any smooth bay water on a quiet evening.  Some others were gathering to watch.  Many less people than might be here in summer, and most with gray hair, were gathering for the show.

This so reminded us of Sunset Beach on the slightly western tip of New Jersey’s Cape May.  And of many, many summer evenings ended there when I and my brother Jim were small, with our kids, and the grandsons just a few years ago.

As we watched the sun drop below Pine Island just to our south we talked with a group of friends gathered also at water’s edge.  It turned out one of them grew up an Evangelical United Brethren, as both of us did, and attended every year of child and youth camp, as we did, though he grew up in Indiana.

Another couple have grown up as Baptist’s and then independents, now missionaries to Ghana and Zimbabwe. They are involved in clean water development in Ghana, Doug Franks, As you were some years ago.

The sun dropped, and dropped, and dropped.  

And we made it back to our car and a pizza in the oven.  No, not one of Mona’s famous homemade pizza’s. Frozen and store bought this time. But it was OK.  Maybe next time if Mona can find the right kind of premade dough she’ll make one of her masterpieces.  Scratch just takes too much time away from reading!

-Ken