A DQ Story

My very favorite drive through place is Dairy Queen. I was thrilled recently when I discoverd that if I go into Marshall on Business 65, there sits, yes a DQ between the turnoff and downtown Some of you who know Marshall might wonder how I could go there as many times as I have in the last four years and not notice the DQ. Well, you see, I still use Dick Curry's cards. Dick Curry's cards. you ask? Playing cards? No. Baseball cards? Wrong again. Tarot cards? How DARE you infer that Dick Curry would own a set of Tarot cards!!! (Dick was my predecessor as ds of HND and now is the assistant to the bishop). No, no. I mean the index cards upon which he wrote fantabulous directions to every one of the district churches!!! The only times I have gotten lost is when I forgot my cards. Forget Mapquest or GPS! I have cards!!! And, the way Dick describes going to First Marshall (and North Street t0o) is to go up to 20 and go downtown, which may indeed be shorter than 65 B. And if those directions were good enough for Dick they're good enough for me!

Anyway, I found the DQ three or so weeks ago when I had come over to a meeting at North Street in the evening. I decided to go back the way less traveled by (at least by me it had never been travelled by at all) and found the DQ whence I stopped at and planned to go through the drive thru. Therein was the problem. I could NOT find the drive through order thingy..round and round I went, with my wheel set just so and started to do my own version of a NASCAR race, but all alone. I finally just stopped at the pick up window and asked. The worker took my order and said, when I asked her where the drive thru order thing was, she said"it's back there" and moved her head in a northwesterly direction. Hmmm.

Well today, as I was driving into Marshall this new way, I remembered the DQ and I forgot that I did not know where the drive up ordering thing was until I started to look for it. THREE TIMES I went around and around and still no sign of a drive up order thingy. So again I just went to the window, and ordered, and when I asked about it, the young woman said, "Oh...you're supposed to go to the SECOND drive way on the side of the building instead of the first one."How in the world, I ask, with no signage and arrows or anything like that, was I supposed to know that? I was a first (and second) time visitor and I did not feel welcomed. If I were anything other than a die hard DQ fan, I very well might have given up either of these times. I felt like an outsider ...the implication is "well, EVERYBODY knows where the drive thru order thingy is...what's wrong with you???" What of the many who don't have the gumption to do what I did and ask, and who simply go to another place?

Well, I think you get the metaphor here. Don't assume everyone knows where things are or how to do them. Help folks feel welcomed. And for Pete's sake, don't just laxidasically point the way but go there with them. God did it for us; I imagine we can do it for the souls who pass our churches' way.