BAY MINETTE, Ala. — Last Saturday, the Union Baptist Church Enrichment, Mentoring and Scholarship Committee sponsored its first annual Seniors Awards Banquet.

Everything was just wonderful. The youth department and Junior Red Circle Group had been trained to serve as waiters and waitresses. They had hostesses as well as a young man, Josh Brown, who served as the manager, that you could check with if you had a problem.

He was decked in his suit casually checking the room asking you if everything was OK and how’s the evening going. The decoration was black and white. So, all the young people were dressed in white blouses and shirts with black skirts or slacks and they all wore black aprons. They came to take your orders. So it was from the menu they presented to you.

To start things off, you had a choice of homemade soup or tossed salad. Your meal consisted of a choice of baked chicken, beef sirloin or honey baked ham for meats. Then you had mixed steamed vegetables, fresh string beans, candid yams, rice, corn or mashed potatoes.

Then desserts consisted of peach cobbler, strawberry cake and ice cream. Beverages were bottled water, tea, coffee and homemade punch. It was super nice.

They brought you the menu and took your order and brought it to you just like at a real restaurant. They were trained by Kay McWilliams.

The seniors had a real treat as well as all of us. The seven seniors had all received book scholarships from the church at the High School Award Night Ceremony, but on Saturday night, two more of the seniors received larger scholarships. They were Jerald Crook who received the Academic Scholarship of $1,000 and Donald Taylor Jr. received the Memorial Scholarship for $750 to the school of their choice.

Congratulations to all of the seniors and the Scholarship Committee with Lucinda Freemas as director, J. Allison Boykin as president and Glennie Williams as vice president.

They had everything down to a T. The attire was dressy or after 5. It was topnotch. Serving as emcee of the program was Sabra Simmons, who is a senior at Troy University and did a wonderful job with the program. She is also a member of the church scholarship committee.

Sabra is busy at Troy, too. She is a member of several honor societies as well as serves as president of Habitat for Humanity for Troy. The past two years she served as vice president and was then elected as president for 2008. She is a whiz in the class room maintaining a 3.6 GPA. She is my daughter and I can honestly say she is a hard worker, smart and loves the Lord.

Mt. Olive Baptist Church held a Colorama Saturday night at the Bay Minette Civic Center honoring their pastor, the Rev. Elijah Johnson.

Last Sunday, Bethlehem Baptist Church held an appreciation for the Rev. Harry Ponds their assistant pastor who is in his 70s.

Special guests were St. Mary Baptist Church and their pastor, the Rev. Turnbow who brought the message. The Rev. Jimmy Prince is the pastor at Bethlehem.

Hold the fourth Sunday in July for Bay Minette Church of God in Christ as they will celebrate their church anniversary. The pastor is the Rev. Starks.

Until next week, I pray that we will all thank God for our many blessings and share them with others.