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“Amen!” I called out.
The word that Pastor Brown was giving us was blessing me. He just had a way of speaking to the church that made it feel as though he was speaking directly to you. The church had made the right decision in hiring him.
It had been about five months since everything had happened at New Greater Hope Baptist Church, and things were finally getting back to normal.
It had never been my goal to hurt the church, but that month had been a lot for me to deal with. The dream about my mother and the fast itself had taken a lot out of me. I just wanted answers.
Pastor Stewart had a smart system going, despite him getting caught. At first, he’d just been borrowing money from his monthly bills, but that wasn’t enough for him. Over time, he started to steal from the church. When things at home got too expensive, he’d take from the church to pay his bills and vice versa. He used Andre to help him move the money around because no one would be the wiser.
He would have gotten away with it too if not for two things; me seeing him at Catherine’s and him losing so much money. You see, his plan could only work as long as he stayed within a few thousand dollar range. He got greedy though and soon, he couldn’t pay the money back on either end. Every little bit of cash that he got would have to go towards paying stuff off.
He’d been keeping Andre in check because Andre had a secret; he'd recently cheated on his wife and had a daughter behind her back. Andre and his wife already had kids who were practically grown. They were still in the beginning stages of being able to deal with it, but they hadn’t broken up. I told Andre that he shouldn’t cheat on his wife anymore, but who was I to judge?
The Board of Directors voted unanimously to remove Pastor Stewart. They also filed criminal charges against him, and he was currently sitting in jail, awaiting trial. His wife moved away, too ashamed to show her face. I would have been too if my husband had done so much shit behind my back without me noticing.
The church had a very long interview process to find another person to lead us as pastor. I heard they’d done extensive background checks and stuff before they ended up with Pastor Anthony Brown. He was from Texas and was 43 years old. He’d been at the church for a month now and was settling in quite nicely. He was a strong and firm leader, something I think the church desperately needed.
The funny thing was that Pastor Stewart had been right all along about what he said. The fast had worked out for the church. The week after the former pastor was arrested, church attendance swelled. It seems people had heard about what could happen at the church and wanted to come to see if anything else would happen. Over the past few months, we’d started to feel normal again.
I made a couple of changes in my life too. I’d been living in the fast lane and hadn’t been thinking clearly about myself or the things that were best for me. I wasn’t close to wanting to settle down, but I did know that it was something I wanted in the future. I decided that I was going to be more selective about who it was that I gave my kitty cat too. Guys were cool, but I was starting to figure myself out more