The Bear Wrestler

All of the Junior Rangers are now officially afraid of me. Today was William Johnson day at Junior Ranger Camp, and I happened to be the ranger working down there all day. Tim told all of the kids that Ranger Tiffany is from Utah and she wrestles bears, panthers, and mountain lions, and also lives by herself in the mountains. Mississippi kids must be really gullible because some of them actually believed him. Do I really look like I could wrestle a bear? Come on kids, most of you are bigger than me.

After the kids left this afternoon, it got a little quiet there, so I started flipping through the new "10th Anniversary" phone books we received. All of the rangers were wondering what it is the 10th anniversary of--maybe when phones first appeared in Natchez? I was back in the yellow pages, and I happened to run across the "Churches" section. I don't think I've ever seen so many church categories in my life. Under "Churches" there were the African Methodist Episcopal, Apostolic, Assemblies of God, Baptist (which had the most listings of any church), Baptist Independent, Baptist-Missionary, Baptist-Southern, Bible Missionary, Catholic, Church of Christ, Church of God, Church of God-Anderson, Indiana (I don't get that one), Church of God in Christ, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (hooray! although we were the only category that only had one listing under it), Episcopal, Full Gospel, Interdenominational, Jehovah's Witnesses, Lutheran, Methodist, Methodist-United, Missionary-Baptist, Non-denominational, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, and Seventh-day Adventist. Whew! That's a lot of different types of churches! It kind of makes me think of Palmyra, New York at the time of Joseph Smith's First Vision. I think it was called the "burned-over district." My favorite church name in the yellow pages was St. Peter Rock #1 Baptist Church. I also found it amusing that there were five separate "First Baptist" churches. Anyway, at least people around here are very religious. I was watching a show on the History channel the other night about Mississippi, and reportedly 57% of Mississippians say they go to some kind of church, and the largest Bible bindery in the world is located in Mississippi!