Today is Palm Sunday and we were excited to get up and go to Mount Pleasant Seacoast Church. We all got dressed up a little, and Christian and Brooke unhooked the RV all by themselves!! I’m so proud of how helpful and responsible they were this morning . . . much better than yesterday!!
We drove off to find this church that I had found on the internet. It was supposedly only 20 minutes from our camp ground and we were actually on time. We arrived at the address that we had but it appeared to be only small office buildings. Hmmmm . . . and there weren’t any cars in the parking lot. This couldn’t be it . . . we called the phone number and the address was the same. BUT at the end of the message it said that the office is across from the church campus. Ahhh . . . we turned around and saw it across the street . . . how we missed it I’m not sure, because the church and parking lot was enormous. When we drove in, there were 5 men in official t-shirts directing traffic. There was a sign that said “if you need special parking, let us assist you,” so I rolled down the window and told the guy that indeed I needed special parking!! He smiled and pointed us to the overflow parking lot.
Now that we were 10 minutes late because we couldn’t find the place, we ran through the parking lot. We went through the entrance and found the room that said “The Chapel” and we went in. But something wasn’t right because the parking lot was packed with cars and there weren’t very many people in to chapel. I asked the user if this was the main service and he said, “Oh no, it’s through those doors.” So we quickly walked through the glass doors and entered what felt like a large pavilion. There was a coffee & bakery center (and Oh did it smell good . . . like fresh cinnamon rolls), a bookstore, and a large information center. We asked the lady at the desk who was wearing headphones and look quite professional where to go. She asked how many of us and then grimaced with the answer of seven teilling us that thee probably isn’t any room. She radioed to her buddy on the head sets and he responded to go to balcony B. The funny thing is, this lady had no idea where balcony B was . . . we ended up finding it on our own.
We walked into the balcony and “Oh my goodness” the congregation was HUGE!!! And the whole place was packed . . . we had to split up into 3 groups to find a seat. We missed the worship but the young pastor started his teaching on hope in Jesus and prayer, based on Palm Sunday and the coming of Easter. In Phillippians 4:6-7 he talked about praying specifically and not stopping, and then God will give you a hope and peace. It was a great reminder. After his message he invited us all to take communion after we spent time praying & preparing our hearts . . . the worship band, which was amazing, started playing, and you were to get up when you were ready to take communion which was over in the corner of the balcony. He also invited anyone who needed prayer to come up front to pray with any of the lay people. After finishing communion, he made some announcements about Easter and mentioned that the church had 20,000 people . . . WOW!! Our mouths just dropped. 20,000 people!!! I’ve never been to a church that big. He also announced that they were selling box lunches outside when you left the church for $5 for their missions ministry. Sounded great . . . easy lunch and supporting a ministry . . couldn’t be better!! So we all decided to get one and they had a wonderful variety of sandwich wraps or salads, and they were delicious too!! That was a fabulous church experience, one that we all will remember forever.
The Boone Plantation that we wanted to visit was just down the street from the church. This is one of the biggest and most important working plantations in South Carolina. After we paid at the gate we drove down a dirt road towards the entrance and all of a sudden we saw the trees . . . . “the trees” from North & South, the mini- series movie that is one of my favorites and that I just had the girls watch before we left!! The girls were jumping up and down and yelling they were so excited. Then Madison piped in and said, “It’s the road from the Notebook”!” The row of trees to the plantation house was beautiful and I could just imagine riding on a horse down the row of trees to the front of the house.
As we drove down the road through the trees, to the left were 8 small rectangular, probably 10 ft x 18, brick homes intended as slave quarters. It was very interesting that they were to the front of the plantation house, but we learned on the tour that they were placed out there purposely so to show the wealth of the master by how many slaves they owned. They had only 8 homes out there now, but it used to be 3 rows of eight.
This plantation was the most known brick producing plantation in South Carolina. In 1743, the son of Major John Boone planted live oak trees, arranging them in two evenly spaced rows Boone Hall is one of America's oldest working, living plantations. We have been continuously growing and producing crops for over 320 years. Once known for cotton and pecans, they are still actively producing strawberries, tomatoes, and pumpkins. Because the slave homes were made of brick, we learned that placing the slave homes in the front of the house was like an advertisement of the manufacturing of the plantation’s product. They were also the nicer homes for the slaves that had a skill . . . the majority of the slaves, who were cotton pickers, had homes farther out on the plantation.
As we walked over to the slave quarters there was a black “Gullah” lady making their famous Sweet Grass Baskets. We watched her weave the reeds together and she was amazing. She told us she had been doing this since she was 8 years old and that all the Gullah women learn to weave sea grass baskets when they are young.
We strolled down the slave quarters to the last building where they were having a Gullah drama production. We sat in the outdoor theater and a beautiful, older black woman came out singing an old hymn, raising her hands as if she was singing to the Lord. It was beautiful. She then said, “the faces of my people are beautiful; the eyes of my people are beautiful, “ and went on to tell us “dramatically” about the Gullah culture . . . how some slaves were treated harshly but most were treated kindly but like children; how they lived in such small quarters with very little food & worked from sun up to sun down; how they only had first names & they acquired the last name of their master; how they worshipped secretly in the woods at night, after they were taught about Christianity (they were not allowed to worship all together – they had to worship with their owners at their church only); how they had to get permission to get “hitched” by their master, and their master could end it at any time if the spouse was sold . . . and they didn’t have an official ceremony, they took a broom, put it in the doorway & jumped over it holding hands, and they were “hitched”!! Because one of the main crops on many plantations was rice, every meal had some kind of rice dish . . . they never had a meal without it. And most of all, the Gullah slaves came from North Africa, not Jamaica or the west Indies, and they had their own language where you could be in an English conversation with a Gullah person and have no idea what they were talking about . . . kind of like the“pig latin” language.
It was an incredible performance and at the end, she dramatically said three times, “My story . . . your story . . . our story (with her arms crossed against her chest), and after the 3rd time she said, “My story . . . your story . . . our story . . . His story (pointing to the sky). I was crying at the end of the performance. Powerful!!
After the performance we ran back down to the Gullah lady weaving the baskets to buy the basket that we wanted before they were all sold. Shelley and I each bought a beautiful little basket for $25 . . . best prices in town we were told. This basket with the top cost $150 which should tell you how much intricate work goes into making these baskets.
Next we went back through all the slave quarters with each one representing a different part of the slave cultures. Most of it was a review of what it Gullah woman just told us about how they lived, but one building explained how they were bought and sold, and had the documents written out in detail of how much each slave was worth on the Boone Plantation, right next to all their equipment. It was heart wrenching and very sobering.
Next we went on the house tour. The front of the house looked like the one on North & South but the inside looked nothing like it (the wonders of Hollywood J). We toured the main entrance, the dining room, the library & music room, and the sun room. Of course it was all elaborate & beautiful, but we couldn’t take pictures.
The docent talked about all the different owners of the house and each detail that they put into it. The main crop’s of the plantation was cotton. Pecans, and indigo originally, and then they mainly worked on brick production. They realized that the mud by the waterway running next to the house was perfect for brick making. The waterway would transport the products to Charleston Harbor.
Last we went on the plantation gardens tour on the trolley to see the ground, although while we waited in line for it we went into the little café to buy homemade ice cream & strawberries. Still today it is a working plantation growing all kinds of fruits and vegetables such as strawberries, corn, cantaloupe, peaches, and pumpkins in the fall. We drove by a man made pond where the tour guide said there were two alligators living in there, but since it was being cleaned out, the alligators were probably living over by the bridge. When got back to the main house, the kids all ran over to the little covered bridge, and sure enough there was the alligator! Wow!!
It was a busy, fun-filled day, and now we needed to drive to Willingston, North Carolina, a 6 hour drive!! It was an uneventful drive (thankfully), and the kids were still awake when we crossed the North Carolina border. We arrived at the very large, well-lighted Walmart, and parked next to the other RV’s there for the night and went straight to bed!!
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