You Know, One of Those Churches in George County...

Monday afternoon, our Worship Pastor's wife brought us a piece of mail that had been delivered to their house, which is next door to the church.  The letter was from a Baptist Association in a neighboring county.  The envelope was addressed to an individual unknown to either of us, therefore probably not a member of our congregation and certainly not in a leadership position here.  Under that lady's name was our church name:  Agricola Baptist.  Under that was an address on a highway that does not exist in George County.  (I did however find it around Mantachie, MS).  Under the unknown highway was Lucedale, MS  39452, which is good for all of George County as well as a bit of Jackson County.

The number portion of the address was changed (by hand) to our Worship Pastor's house number and the highway number was changed to the highway number the church is located on.  His address must be in a data base known to the post office as owned by the church.  After some investigation, I found that the scratched out number was, in fact, the street number of another Baptist church in our community.  The highway number had an extra digit, but was similar enough to assure me that I had found the intended recipient.

Or so I thought...

I had arranged for our housekeeping lady, who also does the housekeeping for the other church, to deliver the misdirected missive.  Problem solved, right?  Wrong.  This particular week, our regular church secretary is on vacation.  She arranged for the previous secretary to take her place while she was gone.  In the course of my speaking to the housekeeper/impromptu-mail-carrier, the substitute secretary heard the name of the individual that the envelope was directed to.  "Oh, she's not at B***** Baptist. She's the WMU director at R**** C**** Baptist."


I called the now 3rd church involved in this misdirection and found that yes, the lady on the envelope was still the Women's Missionary Union director there.  Since it wasn't convenient to send someone out to deliver it across the county, the secretary there said to fax it over and she'd make sure it was delivered to the lady in question. 


I think it's funny that with that one envelope, that neighboring association had covered 3 different churches in George County, where we just about all know each other anyway.