PROLOGUE
Spirit Temple Pentecostal Christian Church has everything a good bible
thumping Holy Roller would want, shouting, speaking in unknown tongues, Holy Ghost
dancing, fainting and rolling around on the floor in fits of rapture, live music
along with a big choir. Membership has reached seven thousand. This is the
Easter morning service, and that means it will be very long, and they still have
to come back for Evening Service. Evening services can last past 2 A.M, and
that is seven days a week. Sunday school
is at 8 A.M. and church services start at 9:30 A.M.
The first collection starts at about
10:30 A.M and the Ushers are wearing white dresses. Sister Nadine is an elegant
old woman of seventy, and she hands the collection plate to a woman sitting at
the end of the pew and she passes it to the person sitting next to her. This
continued for about twenty minutes until they completed the ritual, and that’s
with almost thirty Ushers. Some people dropped cash into the collection plate
while other dropped a collection envelope into the gold plate. This was not
Nadine’s Sunday, but the regular Usher was helping someone that over-heated and
passed out in the Holy Ghost Room, so the Mother of the Church, Mother Beulah
asked her to help with the collections.
Nadine sent the tray down each of
her rows without a problem until she got to the end of the last row. She
noticed an opened collection envelope on the top, and sticking part of the way
out, a lottery ticket.
On musical queue the ushers marched
to the end of the church to a waiting Mother Beulah with their collection
plates. Nadine whispers to Mother Beulah, “Someone put a lottery ticket in the
collection plate.”
Shocked, Mother Beulah asked, “Who
did it?”
“There are so many people…I couldn’t
tell,” says Nadine.
Mother Beulah informs Nadine, “It’ll
be okay. I’ll take it out and throw it away in the counting room.”
