Mrs. Mozelle

Mozelle was the first person from Susan Song that I spoke with last summer. She has a delightful laugh and conveys an energy level beyond her seventy-five years. After we met, I learned that she teaches the Adult (which is to say only) Sunday School class. Since I want the church to continue to do as much as it has during the interim time, I declined the invitation to teach Sunday school and instead sit on the back row where I can observe and (very occasionally) comment.

Her classes are fairly predictable. They are full of bubblyness, shrill cackles of laughter and frequent Hallelujahs offered up with the constant refrain “Isn’t God so good?!” She reminds me at times of a Muppet, constantly smiling and throwing her head back in a boisterous laugh. She follows a rote teaching pattern, drawn from a careful study of the SBC adult Sunday School literature. (Last quarter, the wrong series of literature was ordered and she expressed such concern that we quickly ordered the traditional kind). Mozelle ends every Sunday School the same way. Each class member holds their index fingers aloft while she says “Let your…” and the class shouts back “little light shine.”

It is, at times, more than I can stand.

“There’s the Preacherman!!!!” she shouts whenever I arrive at Susan Song. Her outlook is soooo rosy and sooo saccharine, that I thought I could never relate to her. Surely someone who has only led a sheltered life could be that overly joyful all the time, right?

But I was wrong. Tomorrow, what I learned from Mrs. Mozelle.