My series on the people I have met and learned from along the way continues. This story has been told thousands of times (mostly by Tom).

Fresh out of Bible College, I began my ministry as Children’s Pastor at the Foursquare Church in Waynesboro, VA. I spent five years there and look back at that time with many fond memories. The people were simply the best. They loved Jesus and people with a passion that has stayed with me all these years.

I learned a lot about ministry and life over those 5 years. I also learned practical jokes ALWAYS go farther than intended.

My first or second year in Waynesboro, the women had a Christmas party. At this particular party there was a Chinese Gift Exchange/Yankee Swap. Each woman had to bring a wrapped ornament to exchange. The premise of a Chinese gift exchange is you pick a number. Whoever gets the first number gets to choose first. Whoever has the next number gets to steal or choose from the pile and on an on it goes. It can get crazy.

When it was my turn, I decided to be greedy and go for the biggest box in the middle. Bigger must be better, right?  Bad choice. I ended with an angel lawn ornament, not a tree ornament. And. It. Was. Ugly. Nobody would steal it from me no matter how much I begged. It became a joke. My good friend, Ann. teased me the most.

Tom and Ann lived around the corner from me and were part of the youth team I led. They became some of my closest friends. On the way home from the women’s Christmas party, I decided to pay Ann back for making so much fun of me. I got a candle, put it on the angel and lit it outside their door so when she opened it, she would see the burning angel. Looking back I can now see the creepiness of it all.

I thought I had won.

A couple of weeks later at the Youth Christmas Party, I was presented with a present from the whole youth group. I absolutely love receiving gifts! Imagine my surprise/disappointment/annoyance when I opened the gift and it was the dreaded angel (with gift certificates).

Not to be outdone, I got her mom’s phone number. Ann’s mom and dad lived in Florida and would come up for the holidays. I arranged with Ann’s mom to put the gift in their car so it would be in the pile around the Christmas tree. On Christmas morning, surrounded by all her family, she opened the angel.

We exchanged it “creatively” a few more times. And for months I had won. Or so I thought. I would soon learn that you cannot out prank Tom. It simply cannot be done.

The following summer (because revenge or pranks are best served cold), I took a core group of my youth group to boot camp at Camp McPherson preceded by a camp out in my sister’s back yard and a trip to Cedar Point. The drive home in the church van was long and arduous. One of the teens was car sick the entire way home, another had passed out the first day of boot camp.  At this point, I’m exhausted, frazzled, and a wee bit grouchy. As we pull up the long drive to the church, I notice Tom standing with all the parents with a video camera. As I get out of the van, fighting the urge to kiss the ground for safely making it back home, Tom asks me with the camera in my face, “Did you see your car?”

I had a purple Geo Metro. Remember how small they were? And how uncommon the color purple was for a car? As I approached my car, I noticed the hood was colorful like Jeff Gordon’s rainbow car (we were in Nascar territory after all) and had a bunch of writing on it.

And sitting, glued to the hood in all its glory was the angel lawn ornament. The biggest, ugliest hood ornament you ever did see, painted like Jeff Gordon’s rainbow car.

I walked around the hood, scratching it, talking out loud to myself “this isn’t coming off…this is permanent”. As the reality of what I was looking at hit me, Tom shoved the camera in my face and asked, “How do you like your car”.

Anger is not my go to emotion. Of all the emotions, I have the hardest time with feeling and expressing anger. But I was mad. I said, “Tom, you better get that camera out of my face right now and you better get out my face right now before I say something I regret.”

Later that night was a pool party for the whole youth group. I had to drive my purple metro with a colorful angel hood ornament on a colorful hood, through the streets of Waynesboro and Staunton. I found out later Tom hired a locksmith, broke into my car and changed the hood with one he found in a junk yard after painting it and having the youth sign it. I’m not embarrassed to say that I did not talk to Tom for a couple of days. And he left the hood on for a couple of days.

I still have that hood. The angel didn’t survive replacing my hood with the original. I had to bow to the master and wear the shirt Tom gave me “You are the weakest link”.

Pranks went back and forth; I saran wrapped their 4-poster bed, they put Vaseline under my car door handles, yards were forked, cars were put up on blocks, but what finally stopped the escalation of the Great Practical joke war was the baby powder incident. Tom, along with some of the youth, decided to put baby powder in my car vents so that when I turned on the air conditioner it would blow all over me. Unbeknownst to Tom, I had a funeral that day. It was graveside only. I was wearing a black blazer and black skirt. You can picture what happened. And how desperately I was wiping my clothes down.

To his credit, Tom felt terrible. He should have 😉

Tom and Ann are still two of the best people I have met along the way. Their love for Jesus, people, especially the NextGen is the real deal. Their hospitality is legendary. I still know beyond a shadow of a doubt, if I need a place to crash their doors are wide open. And they reminded me how to have fun again.

Moral of this story: The biggest gift isn’t always the best. It can lead to an angel on your hood and baby powder on your black suit.