Living in God’s country, we’ve found Sundays especially peculiar. It’s the one day of the week when we feel like a clear minority. For people in our neighborhood, Sunday appears to be a day devoted to worship, rest and family. They don’t work, nor do they do anything that defines our Sundays (working out, running errands, gardening or grocery shopping).
Starting early in the morning, cars line the streets surrounding the temple, and many families of eight or more can be seen walking in the temple’s direction. These cars are there all day: church does not last the 55 minutes I remember back at Northbrook Presbyterians – it’s more like 5.5 hours. When church finally does get out, people sit on their porches and read – I’m assuming the bible. It’s a very quiet day.
It’s become clear to us that a person’s behavior Sundays is an important signal to curious neighbors. We’ve never been asked outright if we are Mormon, or anything about our faith. But it’s clear we are being monitored.
This morning, Dirk decided to wash and wax his car (keep in mind this tells people that he is not attending any church and that he works on Sundays). He looked down the driveway to see an adult man and small boy dressed in church clothes staring at him and talking quietly. When Dirk waved, they turned away and kept walking without anything as basic as a head nod.
On the other end of the spectrum, Dirk’s first weekend here revealed a non-Mormon neighbor smoking cigars and drinking Bud Light in his front yard all day. Later, he revealed these actions to be some kind of white flag to signify to Dirk that this particular neighbor was not Mormon.
There are upsides for us amidst this apparent Sunday chess match. For one thing, there is no traffic on the roads. Similarly, no one goes to the gym. Most gyms are actually closed; we belong to the only one in the area that is actually open on Sundays. (For the record, most restaurants and independent businesses are closed too; only chains like Target and Olive Garden stay open for business.) So we have the town to ourselves at least one day of each week.
There’s also the joy of trying to figure out what the neighbors think of us. We like to watch them on their porches and construct elaborate stories about how they are plotting to come and have “the talk” with us. We monologue their thoughts while sipping pale ale or cabernet. When one man answered his cell phone, we hypothesized our neighbor was calling his friends and preparing to come over to us with literature and the Book of Mormon. Or, maybe it was the man who wouldn’t wave back to Dirk calling to find out about us. We decided the child was probably named Malachi.
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