Hi everyone! Or should I say, to the approximately five people reading this? :-) It's been a while since I updated but the story is starting to come together! If you're reading this, could you please leave a comment and let me know you're out there? I could use a little encouragement, thanks!

"Mommy!"

It was the Friday after Joey had first arrived at Ecclesia. Beth heard her son's voice through the car window even before she shut off the engine. He was bouncing on his toes, a gesture she hadn't seen in him before. Her heart gave a little pang. Was Joey so miserable here that he couldn't wait to see her? Had she done the right thing, letting him live with people she didn't even know?

She opened the car door and stepped out. Before she could even close the door Joey threw his arms around her waist and buried his face against her. "Hey there, kiddo." She dropped down to his level and returned the embrace. "How are you doing?"

Joey didn't answer right away, but simply squeezed her harder. Beth looked over his shoulder at the two people who had been standing next to Joey when she drove up. One of them she recognized as Laura. The older woman seemed normal enough. She was wearing jeans, a long sleeved plaid shirt, and a blue headband that covered most of her hair. The other was a blond haired boy around the same age as Joey. The boy grinned at her cheekily.

Beth nodded at Laura and the unknown child over Joey's shoulder, but her concern was for her son. What had happened to make him so upset? "Have you missed me, sweetie?" she asked, tightening her arms around him.

Joey stepped back. His face, too, was wreathed in smiles. "No!"

The answer was so unexpected that she inadvertently blurted out, "What?" She had missed Joey terribly. The condo might as well have been empty without his cheerful chatter and his footsteps going up and down the stairs.

Beside Laura, the small blond boy giggled, clapping a hand over his mouth.

"I guess I missed you," Joey amended sheepishly, stepping back away from her. "A little." The blond boy giggled again, an infectious sound. Laura raised an eyebrow at him and he stopped, though his grin remained.

Beth could now take a good look at her son. Joey was clean and well dressed, wearing jeans and a t-shirt she didn't recognize. His hair was tussled, suggesting he had been running about recently, and his cheeks were flushed. Best of all, his face shone with excitement. "I'm glad you haven't been lonely," she said, squeezing his shoulder. "Hello, Laura. It's nice to see you again," she added, reaching out to shake the older woman's hand.

Laura accepted her hand and they shook awkwardly. After all, up until now they had only seen each other at Laura's annual Christmas visits. Their encounters had been friendly but brief. "Who is this?" Beth asked, turning to the blond boy.

"This is Micah," Joey answered proudly. "He's my best friend!"

"Hello, Micah." Beth shook his hand solemnly, noting a mischievous glint in his eyes. No doubt this one was a handful. "What do you and Joey like to do together?"

"Everything!" both boys responded, in unison, and then laughed.

"They're thick as thieves, these two," Laura told her. "We have a hard time telling them apart," she added with a grin, since the contrast between Micah's blond hair and Joey's dark brunette could hardly be more obvious.

Joey was bouncing on his toes again. "We've been helping plant seeds in the garden and feed the chickens and yesterday we got to help fix one of the tractors! That was so much fun! You should have seen how dirty we got."

"We got super dirty," Micah chimed in, "and Miss Laura was real cross at us. But it wasn't our fault!"

"I wasn't "cross," as you put it, until you came into the kitchen before washing up!" Laura's voice was affectionate, not scolding. "You can get as dirty as you want as long as you keep the dirt outside." She rolled her eyes expressively at Beth.

"You helped fix a tractor?" Beth asked, bemused. She couldn't remember the last time she had seen her son so enthusiastic about something that didn't need to be plugged in and recharged every night.

"We picked up tools when they fell and handed them to Jacob, and he let us tighten some of the bolts and everything! He said we did a great job!" Joey beamed.

Beth didn't know who Jacob was or what "everything," meant, but obviously the experience had been important to Joey. "Do you want to come and see the tractor?" he asked her now, reaching for her hand.

Beth hesitated. She had come to Ecclesia with a specific purpose, and it would be better to carry out her plan as quickly as possible. "Maybe I can do that later. Right now I need to talk to your aunt Laura. Is that okay?"

"Okay." Joey's face fell but he wasn't disappointed for long. "Can I go swimming with Micah? All the boys are going but Aunt Laura said I had to ask you first."

She looked questioningly at the other woman. "There's a swimming area in the pond over that way," Laura told her. "We had it sectioned off from the main part of the pond. The kids use it all the time in the summer. It goes to about six feet but there are plenty of adults around. We keep a good eye on them."

Joey had taken swimming lessons but Beth couldn't remember how far he'd progressed. Still, she didn't want to say no when he had that eager look on his face. "Okay, I guess."

"Yay!" Joey squealed. "Let's go get changed!" He and Micah turned and ran off without a backward glance, disappearing behind the farmhouse Beth had parked in front of. She found herself smiling after them. Whatever else might be happening in his world, Joey was content.

"Joey's been doing great here," Laura now told her, as if reading her thoughts. "He's a super kid."

"I'm glad to hear that," she answered almost mechanically, looking around her at the farmhouse, the barn, the pond, and everything in between. She noticed that every area was clean and orderly. Not a blade of grass was out of place.

"Are you hungry?" Laura continued. "Dinner won't be for a couple of hours and I know you had a long drive from the city. Maybe we should get a bite to eat, and then we can get your things out of your car and show you where you'll be staying."

"Actually . . . " Beth gulped for air. This was going to be harder than she thought. "I'm not sure if I'll be staying. Or if Joey will. I might want to take him back to the city with me. Tonight."

"Oh." Laura's face creased with concern. "Is everything okay?"

"No. Maybe. I don't know." She laughed nervously. "I'm not making much sense, am I?"

Laura shook her head, confused.

"I guess . . . I should have asked more questions."

"About what?"

"About Ecclesia. What you do here. What you're like. That kind of thing. Mark hasn't really told me much about you, and what I found on the internet is . . . . confusing."

"I see." It was Laura's turn to look confused. "Did you read something about Ecclesia that concerned you?"

"Well . . . . yes."

She braced herself for the other woman's reaction, but Laura just said, "Oh." She shook her head. "I should have known. There's a lot of nonsense written about us."

Beth gave a small sigh of relief. At least Laura wasn't offended easily. "So you don't believe any of it is true?"

"People think what they want to think." Laura shrugged. "Christians have always been judged and labeled and misunderstood, from the very first believers right up until today. There's no reason we should be any different."

"So what do you say when people accuse you of being a cult?" Beth braced herself for the response.

"I tell them they should judge for themselves." Laura's voice was casual, but Beth didn't miss the challenge in her eyes. "If you want to take Joey back to Philly, obviously we can't stop you. But it's not fair to us. I would ask you to look around first, see whatever you want, and ask any questions you want. We'll be happy to try to answer."

Laura had a point. Beth looked up at the sun, standing high overhead. "Is there someplace cool we can go and sit down? It's hot out here."

Laura followed her glance. "I'll take you to Grace House. There's plenty of seating in there, and you can look around for yourself."

"Your members won't mind?"

"No." Her voice was firm. "We have nothing to hide."

Laura and Beth walked past the oversized farmhouse, following a sidewalk that started at the farm house's side door, went through the playground, and wound down and around a rocky ridge. From here the farmhouse was out of sight. At the bottom of the ridge the sidewalk turned abruptly into what reminded Beth of an oversized cottage, two storied, with porches on both floors. "This is Grace House, one of our living quarters." Laura told her. She nodded at another, larger building perhaps a hundred feet further away, likewise backed into a hill. "That one is Mercy."

Beth noted that the outside of the structure looked like a standard small apartment building, except for the saying over the front door:

Grace will lead us home.

The front door of the building was unlocked. They passed inside and went down a wide hallway before reaching another door on their right. Laura opened it, and they stepped into an oversized modern kitchen with gleaming stainless steel appliances and white cabinetry everywhere. The kitchen was empty, silent and absolutely spotless. There was no sound of any activity coming from the hallway beyond the kitchen. Where Beth might have expected to see a work station or island in the middle of the floor, there was just a long wooden picnic table dominating the room. A basket of fresh fruit graced the center of the table.

"Is this kitchen all for one family?" It looked too big to Beth.

"No, four families live in this building. In fact the little boy you met, Micah, lives here with his parents and sister."

"Four families in this one building?" Now the space looked too small.

"The families have their own living areas. The kitchen is the only space they share."

She tried to be tactful. "That sounds . . . crowded."

"Not really. We take most of our meals with everyone else, in the farmhouse. And we're out and about a lot of the day. The apartments are mostly for sleeping in, and they give each family some private space."

"Where are the families now?"

"They're out, either working or playing somewhere. They'll be back here after dinner tonight."

Beth looked around again. Families sharing a communal kitchen . . . . how did that compare with what she had read? "So you don't all live in dorms, exactly, but you do share living quarters."

Laura waved a hand around the room. "Everything in Ecclesia is shared. None of us own anything in our own name."

"You don't own anything? Nothing at all?" Beth repeated. She had read as much online but it was hard to comprehend.

"Not even the clothes on our back. We gave everything up when we joined Ecclesia." Laura spoke matter of factly, as if she hadn't just said something shocking. Beth couldn't help staring.

"Why would you ever do that?"

"We don't have any personal possessions because we don't need them. We take care of each other, and everything we need is provided for us."

If that didn't sound like a cult, Beth didn't know what would. Yet Laura seemed utterly carefree and untroubled. There had to be more to the story. "I don't understand. How does that work, exactly?"

"When we need something, we ask for it. Things are given or assigned to people based on their needs. For example, the clothes I'm wearing now. I asked for shirts and jeans last year when my wardrobe started to get pretty ratty. We have an extensive closet here on site but it didn't have what I needed, so one of the pursers looked around online until she found clothes that were good quality at a decent price. That's what I ended up receiving."

Beth slowly sat down at the picnic table, trying to absorb what the other woman was saying. Laura sat down across from her. "It can't be that simple. What if the purser decided you didn't need more clothes? What if they got you something you really didn't like?"

"We get what we need, not what we want." Laura glanced down at what she was wearing. "Our clothes will never win a fashion award, but they're always serviceable and in good condition. We take care of them, so they last a long time."

Beth thought about the designer handbag she had left in her car, and the Jimmy Choos on her feet right now. "What about larger items, like cars or houses?"

"Ecclesia owns a handful of vehicles that anyone can sign out and use. As for houses, where we live is assigned based on size. Larger families get bigger quarters, and smaller families get smaller ones. It all works out."

"That's crazy. It's too good to be true."

"It may sound crazy, but trust me, it works. It isn't easy, though. This is a life of sacrifice. Nobody likes giving up the nice things they might have had just to take care of their neighbor. It's not how our brains are wired. But it's how the first Christians lived, and it's how the Lord has called us to live, too."

"So you don't have any money of your own?" She still couldn't believe it.

Laura shook her head firmly. "Not a penny. We took vows of poverty when we joined."

Beth looked around the room, at the refrigerator, stove, and other appliances. "What about food? I thought you said people mostly eat in the farmhouse."

"We usually do, but there are times when it's more convenient to fix a meal at home. Each family can pick out food to stock in their own areas of the kitchens."

"How does Ecclesia get the money to buy things from outside the community?"

"We have a store that sells produce and gift items, and a shop that makes handmade custom furniture on demand. The furniture business is actually what pays for most of our bills. With the food we grow for ourselves, we manage to get along."

"I see." She really didn't but it seemed like the most polite thing to say. Nobody owned anything of their own? Ecclesia was like a foreign country, with values and standards she didn't understand.

"We also have some members who work in the community and have what I guess you'd call a "regular" job. But what helps the most is that we don't have a lot of the more expensive things that you do," Laura added.

"Such as . . . "

"Vehicles, for starters. Do you know how much money it takes to buy and maintain—never mind, of course you do. Ecclesia only has a few cars, so that's a major expense we don't have to worry about. The same with cell phones. We can get a cell phone if we absolutely have to have one, but we tend to use old fashioned land lines a lot more. In fact we hardly have any electronics. We live very simply."

"TVs? Computers?"

"There's a few computers here and there, mostly in the store and shop. I'm not sure about TV's. There might be one in storage somewhere."

"But what's the purpose of saving all this money?" Beth finally voiced the suspicion lurking in the back of her mind. "Is the money you're making and saving going to one of your leaders or something? I've read about these kinds of groups before, and it always turns out that someone in charge is taking all the money for themselves. There's always an angle. Somebody always takes advantage of the people underneath them."

"No, the money doesn't go to our leaders." Laura seemed untroubled by the implicit accusation. "Whatever we have left over, we share with those in need. God placed us in this world to love people, not things."

"I'm sorry, but that's terribly naïve. I'm an accountant, so I know how money works. Does anyone audit your books? I bet if you looked them over you'd find-"

She couldn't finish her sentence. There was a sudden disturbance in the hallway leading into the building from outside, a sound of quick footsteps and urgent voices mixed together. Then the door flew open and two women surged in, one with a small figure in her arms, a child clinging closely to her and sobbing. Beth recognized the thin figure and blond hair at once. It was the little boy Joey had introduced her to, the one he called his best friend, Micah.

Would you want to live at Ecclesia now that you've learned a little about it? Will Beth warm up to it, or is she going to take Joey away from what she thinks is a dangerous cult? Let me know what you think, please! I love hearing the notifications that I've just had another comment! -Elaine Owen