Fourth of July

Not often in my life have I celebrated the fourth here in the States. This would be an obvious conclusion since I am a Canadian. However, this year I was here in Alabama for the day. We worked our full day here at MDS. Then in the evening we were invited to a celebration hosted by a local Baptist church. A very patriotic church. They were very kind to invite all of us, short-termers included. We were treated to hotdogs and hamburgers, a watermelon eating contest (which one of our short-termers won), praise & worship, 606 sung by MDS and of course fireworks.

It is the fireworks on which I would like to focus. Fireworks in the States we knew would be good, especialy in the south. The fence was close but we figured they do this every year it’ll be great. Rumour was that it would be a forty minute show. As it started it was great. Things were going off without problems. Then some weren’t going as high as they were supposed too, then some shot into the crowd. The first time it happened I was a little shocked but then when no one was hurt I just laughed and went on enjoying the show. The second time a firework went into the crowd it was a little closer and a lot more debris. We are all alive, this is confirmed, there were moments when we were not sure. After the second time we thought maybe it would be a good idea to move back and so we did. The next exciting things was the box of fireworks caught on fire and it burned up and it kept shooting off blanks and sparks everywhere, rather interesting. It did end with a couple more fireworks that did go off successfully. It was quite an eventful way to end the evening. Only one person got burned on the leg, nothing serious. The long-termers shared many a laugh on the ride home. It was definitely a fourth of July I won’t forget for a while.