A family bike ride is honestly a bigger appeal than church, though also Jeremy can't wait to see what Iomedae is like at a normal service. "Yeah, sure." 

Iomedae is happy about Jeremy's weird elbow armor. It doesn't seem like it'd be very useful in a fight but it does in fact work well for learning to ride a bike. 

"I am dirty and should new clothes for church," she declares.

It's about 9:20 am; they arguably don't need to leave until 20 minutes before the service, but Evelyn wants to leave lots of wiggle room for incidents. "You definitely should, and you've got time for a quick shower too. Here, pass me the elbow pads and things, I'll see if I can get the grass stains off a bit. I think you should wear them for the ride there, though obviously you can take them off before we go in." She used to just throw them in the washing machine when Jeremy came back from his various sports practices, but they don't super have time for that, so Lysol wipes and scrubbing it'll have to be. 

Iomedae has never before interacted with a shower. It is deeply unpleasant, like being in a strong but highly specific rainstorm, and after a few minutes she's miserably cold, but holy warriors don't care about such things. 

She gets out of the shower and makes her hair look nice for church and puts on one of her new sets of clothes and tries to be a respectable person and not look like a drowned urchin. 

"You look nice," Evelyn tells her, even though she mostly looks like someone deliberately trying to dress as a boy and also a peasant. 

...And whose lips are slightly blue. "Iomedae, love, did you have a cold shower? It does go on warm." Maybe it's a weird religious thing but maybe she just literally couldn't figure it out. 

"Oh! That is a good idea, it going on warm. I did not know how make it go warm."

"I'm so sorry! I can show you later once we get back, it's a bit different from the knobs on the sink or bathtub. ...Lily, love, finish your croissant and come upstairs to put a nice dress on, okay? We need to leave in about ten minutes." 

Lily thinks she should wear a PRINCESS dress to church! 

...Lily can wear a princess dress to church, sure. The back seat of the tandem bike isn't anywhere near the chain, so hopefully her taffeta skirt should be safe, but Evelyn is going to insist that Lily puts on leggings underneath and then bundle the skirt into a tail and scrunchie it in place, safely out of the way. 

And they can head out at 9:45. Jeremy takes the lead but tries not to show off too much, Mom is...not the fittest...and Iomedae is the fittest but is still kind of learning. 

Most of the trip is on dedicated bike paths or quiet suburban roads or larger suburban roads with bike lanes. Some of it involves traffic lights and needing to avoid being hit by cars. Jeremy will gesture for them to stop before each tricky bit and make sure Iomedae knows it's coming up. 

Iomedae will be attentive to the cause of not being trampled and left for dead by the local megafauna. It's a very important holy warrior life skill. Jeremy continues to seem like an honorable man.

She's so stressed. She's very glad it's Sunday and she can have Mass now.

It takes them nearly half an hour to get there, but Evelyn has a lot of practice planning ahead, and even with the time it takes to lock up the bikes and remove helmets (and padding, for Iomedae) and deal with mussed hair, they still walk in ten minutes early for the service.

It's in a large building with a high ceiling, the interior mostly a single hall with wood-paneled walls and a large cross and pulpit at the front, with benches behind it for the choir. The pews are mostly empty, though a few elderly women are mingling in the aisle, and one family is already their with their teen children. 

Obviously nearly everyone present knows Evelyn, and she's immediately waylaid to go catch up with the gossiping ladies. 

Wow, Jeremy hasn't been to church since last Christmas and it's giving him a weird burst of childhood nostalgia. ...Also he has a bizarre intrusive desire to yell PRAISE GOD AND COSTCO. He is not going to do that. 

Lily has decided that the pews are an obstacle course and she is going to run up and down all of them. She is only mildly dissuaded by the fact that some of them are occupied. 

"Lily, in church children must be so quiet. Do you know why?"

Lily would absolutely not stop running around if Mummy said that but Iomedae still has enough novelty value to get a lot of attention. "Yah? Why?" 

"Well, there are going to be hundreds of children here. So what if each of them makes even a little bit of noise? There'll be two hundred noise!"

That's so many children! That's, like, her entire school! Where are they going to fit, this isn't as big as Lily's entire school. She looks slightly worried about this. 

"I don't think there are hundreds even at Christmas," Jeremy says dubiously. "Maybe, like, fifty at the kids' Christmas service. I dunno how many families come on a random Sunday, I maybe haven't been on a random Sunday in...sort of a long time."

Jeremy RESENTS feeling weirdly guilty about skipping Boring Church just because Iomedae might retroactively judge him. He would totally go to Cool Atlantis Jesus church. ...He starts amusing himself imagining what the sermons at Cool Atlantis Jesus church would be like. 

There are not, in fact, even fifty children. Maybe thirty, by the time all the families have trickled in and people are making their way to their seats; with parents included (surprisingly often only one parent) that adds up to fiftyish people. There are another fortyish older people, some couples and some coming in alone and some coming as apparently a group of friends. There is a surprising dearth of anyone older than Jeremy and younger than thirty, except for mothers with kids. 

This city is the biggest city Iomedae has ever seen. If half the houses they passed were inhabited, and half those people came to church, everyone wouldn't fit. 

Iomedae looks around at the demographics, kind of puzzled, but points out to Lily that even thirty children is enough that if the children make noises, no one will learn about God, and then they won't get to go to paradise or build it on Earth.

There's an organ prelude, once most people are seated; the start of the music quickly prompts the remaining minglers to find a seat, which isn't hard because the pews are at most a third full. After the organ music stops, the pastor goes up to the front and there's a call-and-response; the audience response is very not together - Lily is mostly mumbleyelling semi-random words and probably so are some of the other kids - but the pastor's bit is spoken slowly enough for Iomedae to understand, and Evelyn knows the whole thing and is trying to speak loudly and clearly for Iomedae's benefit.  

We do not live by bread alone

But by every word that comes from the mouth of God

The sacrifice acceptable to God is a humble spirit

We will strive to follow the way that leads to abundant living

There's a hymn! There are hymnals in the pews, which Jeremy has to hastily consult, but Evelyn has the whole thing memorized, and it's not exactly useful to Iomedae anyway. There's organ accompaniment and the music is tune and easy to follow. 'God' and 'Lord' can occasionally be picked out as Evelyn sings them, but singing is pretty hard to follow. 

This is well within the range of Iomedae's expectations about how church services go! It's hard to understand English when the speakers aren't deliberately being slow and clear for her, but the snatches she gets are usually reasonable things. She makes a mental list of words to ask about at the end, like 'humble' and 'abundant'.

There is a prayer of confession, which also has a (different, junior) pastor speaking up front and the congregation repeating after sections; it's harder to follow, the junior pastor has a Southern accent and speaks fast. 

Afterward is a special children's session! All of the children are invited to come up to the steps and sit with the junior pastor, who is smiling and friendly and welcoming to them. (The children who go up are roughly up to the age of ten or twelve; Evelyn doesn't seem to expect Iomedae to join them.)

And, in fact, Iomedae is very quickly going to learn a definition of 'abundance', because the brief children's session is mostly a lesson on what this word means! Abundance means, more or less, 'having more than we need', and is explained in detail with the example of a 'Thanksgiving table', which sounds like some kind of harvest feast where it's traditional to cook way more food than all the visiting family will actually eat. It's quite easy for Iomedae to follow, since the junior pastor is trying very hard to speak loudly and clearly for the children's benefit.