Another day of school, another day of doing his best to avoid saying or doing anything that would set someone off. Another day of hiding who he was when he was alone. Another day of being picked on, messed with and set up planned humiliation. School was just hard enough without all of the emotional abuse that other children always brought to the table. But tonight there was something special after school. No time to pretend he did his homework tonight! He would just say he didn’t have any and live free. Tonight was the night the prophet was coming to church!
Nolan grew up thinking there weren’t prophets anymore and then all of a sudden he started hearing about these prophets from Missouri! That was pretty close to home and word in the church was that some of the Missouri prophets were originally from Arkansas. Nolan never thought of Arkansas as an important place. He always heard people making Arkansas jokes and people thankful for Mississippi. Whenever a list what on the news Arkansas would be the 49th worst state at whatever it was and Mississippi would be the 50th. So, the joke was thank God for Mississippi so that we aren’t last place at everything.
Nolan didn’t know much about prophets except the ones in the Bible stories. They seemed like super heroes for church kids. Of course, most church kids wouldn’t reference them that way. But the grown ups talked about Moses, Elijah and Daniel and the rest as if they were superhuman. They had powers and knew all sorts of things that they weren’t supposed to know. They could make fireballs kill their enemies, cause bear attacks, make armies of people go blind, part large bodies of water and all sorts of incredible things. Church people thought prophet meant someone who knows everything and can do anything.
Apparently, this one church in Missouri found themselves with like 30 of these guys and started sending them out to talk to other churches. They were traveling the world, doing who knows what all across the globe. Nolan didn’t even know what to think they looked like. Were they regular sized? Could they fly? Would they tell everyone Nolan had a crush on Tory? But still there was a strange excitement when Nolan realized that one of the Missouri prophets was coming to his church. He was coming tonight after school and his mom was dropping everything to get in there early on a Tuesday night.
Practice Outlaw 