Near da' beach, mon!
We made it! I'm writing this post from Tarpon Springs, FL (outskirts of Clearwater), at the house of some familiar and generous friends from a while back. The drive was great, arrived around 11 or noon yesterday, and even though we got here tired, we were ready to start having chillin and having fun immediately. After sunset (we are 30 seconds from the far-west edge of FL, which means the Gulf of Mexico is literally a few backyards from us), we decided to hit Clearwater beach.
And, since life always turns out to be an adventure for us, it just so happens to be the weekend of the Ironman Triathlon which happens to have dominated the entire beach with tents, bikes, stands, sporting equipment, and diseased whales...not really. Anyway, after a couple hours wandering around, we decided to switch locations.
That's where the wildness happened.
We crossed over the bridge back toward the Florida mainland and parked in a business/shopping district to browse around. All of a sudden, we saw hundreds of people dressed in black and white suites and dresses RUNNING from a building on one side of the street, to a different building on the other side. After stopping several people and asking them, I got strange responses saying things like:
"This is for staff only." *keeps running*
"We are just going over production and material for our studies" *keeps running*
What??? Then we had the epiphany that this was the scientology area of town. If anyone reading this knows me or Tyler, you know where this is going...LOL
So I get tired of weak answers and go inside the building myself, escorted by security. At this point, we realize this isn't just any old scientology building, but the SCIENTOLOGY HEADQUARTERS OF THE WORLD. There were giant LCD/plasma screens playing explanatory videos, scary symbols on the ceiling and tables, people buzzing around with books and more books, people listing to things at built-in headphone audio stations, people RUNNING in and out of the building, and even a guy cooking waffles...and this is all at 10:30pm...no lie.
Anyway, without making this post the longest blog entry in history...What we intended to be the first night of our relaxing vacation, ended up being spent debating the real Christian faith against some the world's leading scientologists and sharing the Gospel message. Wow. Oh well, God does everything well, and that was obviously a set-up since they were having a rare meeting, and two random guys from Indianapolis, IN happened to get to Tarpon Springs, find their way over to Clearwater, head back over the bridge, and located a mass migration of scientologists...at night. Good times!
Well, it's time for day number 2! What's next!?
And, since life always turns out to be an adventure for us, it just so happens to be the weekend of the Ironman Triathlon which happens to have dominated the entire beach with tents, bikes, stands, sporting equipment, and diseased whales...not really. Anyway, after a couple hours wandering around, we decided to switch locations.
That's where the wildness happened.
We crossed over the bridge back toward the Florida mainland and parked in a business/shopping district to browse around. All of a sudden, we saw hundreds of people dressed in black and white suites and dresses RUNNING from a building on one side of the street, to a different building on the other side. After stopping several people and asking them, I got strange responses saying things like:
"This is for staff only." *keeps running*
"We are just going over production and material for our studies" *keeps running*
What??? Then we had the epiphany that this was the scientology area of town. If anyone reading this knows me or Tyler, you know where this is going...LOL
So I get tired of weak answers and go inside the building myself, escorted by security. At this point, we realize this isn't just any old scientology building, but the SCIENTOLOGY HEADQUARTERS OF THE WORLD. There were giant LCD/plasma screens playing explanatory videos, scary symbols on the ceiling and tables, people buzzing around with books and more books, people listing to things at built-in headphone audio stations, people RUNNING in and out of the building, and even a guy cooking waffles...and this is all at 10:30pm...no lie.
Anyway, without making this post the longest blog entry in history...What we intended to be the first night of our relaxing vacation, ended up being spent debating the real Christian faith against some the world's leading scientologists and sharing the Gospel message. Wow. Oh well, God does everything well, and that was obviously a set-up since they were having a rare meeting, and two random guys from Indianapolis, IN happened to get to Tarpon Springs, find their way over to Clearwater, head back over the bridge, and located a mass migration of scientologists...at night. Good times!
Well, it's time for day number 2! What's next!?
posted by Joshua at
10:54 AM
2 Comments:
Never in life would you stumble upon their HQ of the world! haha, dude truth really is stranger than fiction. Cooking waffles? Running around? Scary symbols? Man, they live up to their reputation and then some.
when you work for the Lord you never have a vacation lol. He sure chose the right guys for the job.
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