Mountain Grove

I made it the rest of the way down to Bolivar for the night, after posting in Humansville. I heated soup, finished another John Grisham novel, and slept in a sheltered area behind the Southern Hills Baptist Church. In the morning, after packing up, I tried to sneak out as the parking lot filled up, but was spotted and motioned over to the church.
"You want some coffee?" they asked, and I didn't refuse. They brought me inside and halfway through my cup of coffee asked me to stay for service, and I agreed again. After taking a quick shave in the bathroom, I was walked upstairs to a bible study group and sat for an hour with them before heading back down for the actual service.
Pastor Gary Urich met me in the hall.
"Are you the traveler?" I nodded.
"Glad to have you here, this morning. Tell me about the group you're walking with." I do, and he offers that I can stand up and say something if I want to, and I accept.
I sit in the second row and he calls me up to the pulpit at the start of the service to say a little bit about Soles 4 Souls and about the walk.
When the service is over Pastor Urich finds me again.
"I think I'd like to take you out to dinner," he says. After seeing everybody off, he and his wife, Connie, take me out to eat at a Mexican restaurant down the street. As we eat, they invite me to stay the day in town, and tell me they'd be glad to put me up for the night at their house. I agree to take the day off, and after lunch Connie drives me to the library at the local university, and after a couple of hours I walk back to the church, and play the piano for a few hours before the evening service.
We watch a movie for most of the evening, 'Rediscovering God in America.' Once everyone shuffles out and they lock up, Gary and Connie drive over to the Dairy Queen and treat me to ice cream before taking me back to their house.
In the morning, a shower and a night in a bed in me, I'm fed again, and Gary drives me back down to the edge of town, on the highway, where I start walking.
I decided to head around Springfield, and so veered off on highway 32 for the day, and walked to the town of Buffalo. The weather turned rainy, again, and I rolled out the sleeping bag in a baseball dugout, and stayed dry.
In the morning I headed south on highway 65. The clouds came and went, and it drizzled most of the day, but didn't pour until the evening, just after I reached the town of Strafford. I sat for several hours in a gas station and listened to a fuzzy presidential debate on my mp3 player's timid radio.
I set up camp for the night under an old gas station's roof, and listened to it rain as I drifted off.
Wednesday I continued south on highway 125, met highway 60 running east and followed it all the way into the town of Seymour. I slept in the porch way of a thrift store that isn't open on Thursdays.
Yesterday I walked through the towns of Mansfield, Macomb, and Norwood, and didn't stop until just short of Mountain Grove, where I put up my tent in a little field. The weather has been nicer for the last two days, and it's sunny now.