Simple blessings: Thankful hearts gather at old country church

The church is ageless yellow pine, with wood panels, cross sills and lumbered pews worked by hand more than a century ago. It echoes with the past.

On Thanksgiving Eve, the Sauldam Baptist Church congregation goes back into the old sanctuary under the live oaks for a night of skits, readings, songs and worship that opens with recitations like Rudyard Kipling’s “If” and closes with timeless hymns such as “How Great Thou Art.”

The service is a throwback to another time, a sort of harvest celebration that isn’t as common these days.

Read it all from the front page of the local paper.