My Second Family

I'm Miranda Moore. I have gone to the same church since I was born. It wasn't until I came to college that I had ever attended a church service other than the church I had gone to my whole life. To some that may seem odd, but I wouldn't have had it any other way.

Before I jump right in and start telling you some pretty crazy stories about what my friends at church and I have experienced so far in our walk with God and just crazy stories in general I am going to need to give you some background information so that it will all make sense later.

The church that I attend at home and have been going to since I was born is the same church that my mother was raised in and has gone to all her life. It is called Akron Church of the Brethren. It is a rather small, conservative Brethren Church in Akron, Pennsylvania.

My Church, Akron Church of the Brethren

Most of you probably have no idea what Brethren is, or where Akron, Pennsylvania is. So let me explain, Akron is a tiny little town located in Lancaster County. Yes, where all the Amish are. No, I am not Amish, I am Brethren. Now on to what it means to be Brethren. The easiest way to explain it is that it is incredibly similar to being a Mennonite. So if you know anything about Mennonites we are kind of like that, but we also have our differences (it was once explained to me that the difference between Mennonites and Brethren is that Mennonites are good singers and well we Brethren are not at all).

There are many different forms of Brethren Churches; however, the Church I attend is like a combination of all of them. We are very conservative in some of our views: up until this year, we were not allowed to have drums in our church, we do not allow dancing of any kind to be done in our church, we believe in living at peace with everyone, and there are many other things.

There are also ways in which we are not as conservative, such as clothing. At my church we do not wear cape dresses and most of us do not wear coverings, although there are a few that do. The majority of us wear normal Sunday church clothes, nice pants, dress shirts, skirts, and dresses. There are even a few that wear jeans.

My church is relatively small and everyone in our church is related to at least 5 other people, so we are all just one big family. Since it is small that means we had small Sunday School classes growing up and an incredibly small youth group. My Sunday School class always consisted of me, my friend Kristen, and my cousin Matthew and that was it. Being that there was only three of us from the age of five until we were in seventh grade we got to be incredibly close.

Our youth group was a little bigger than three, but not by much. We generally have a total of eight people: Kyle, Cambrie, Jess, Megan, Kristen, Matthew, Ian, and myself. These are the eight people that I am the closest with and have grown so much with, both in my faith and just growing up. One might think that since there are not that many of us we wouldn't get along or we would fight a lot when we go on trips because we would get so tired of being with the same eight people all the time. Well, for us that's not the case. There's only eight of us so if you're mad at one person that only leaves you with six other people to talk to and well that would just get even more annoying. We are all very different but we all get along so well. Since we are so small there is no room for cliques so we all just hang out with everyone and we all love each other.

My youth group and some others from a work camp in North Carolina.

We have had so many adventures together and so many amazing times. I look forward to being able to share the good and bad times with you and hope that you are excited to hear about the crazy stuff we have done and the ways that The Lord is working in our lives and where we think we could be heading in the future.