Lily is ENTHRALLED and also inspired to loudly praise God and Costco several times, which - given the semi-appropriateness of this exhortation in the circumstances of the lesson - gets a lot of giggles. 

Iomedae has never found anyone else's accounts of God as compelling as His own words and His own works but at least it doesn't seem like these people are missing the point. 

The children are ushered out for children's crafts and Bible-themed activities. 

...Lily is stressed and wants Evelyn to walk her over. Evelyn makes an apologetic face at Iomedae and mouths 'I'll be right back, you stay.' 

There is a reading from the gospel of John, which is not quite read clearly or slowly enough for Iomedae to get every word but she can catch the gist, at least of words she knows.  

"Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber.

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.

The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.

But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.”

Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.

Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.

All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them.

I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.

They will come in and go out, and find pasture.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

God is very good and Iomedae loves Him and trusts Him and plans to spend her life in His service and remind Him every day to end Hell. She listens very attentively, with an expression of great urgency and determination, and at the end she weeps.

Evelyn comes back around this point, and can't actually stop herself from resting her hand briefly on Iomedae's shoulder, though she manages not to give her a hug like she REALLY REALLY wants to. She sort of missed what the poignant moment was but she can imagine. 

There's another hymn, this one more serious in tone. 

The sermon is long, nearly twenty minutes, and only partially comprehensible, but seems to be a deeper analysis into the metaphor or 'figure of speech' of God as a shepherd. If Iomedae is following it right, the passage is actually not written by God, but by a third party sometime after the particular actions being described. 

Once she understands the language better and can read the English holy books she's going to be so much less confused. But - the spirit is recognizable anyway, even if she has a bunch of confusions she doesn't have the words for yet.

Evelyn is really bad at sermons and mostly tunes this one out, except for the part at the end where there's a moderately upsetting anecdote about a child dying horribly in a bike race accident, though the followup with the parents forgiving the volunteers and truck driver involved and trying to make sure they wouldn't be crippled by guilt about it was genuinely quite sweet. She forgot how much this particular pastor tends to jump around in sermons, it honestly makes it kind of hard to follow the message even for fluent English speakers. There's also a mildly uncomfortable anecdote about people having arguments at a political rally that she really hopes Iomedae didn't catch much of, because Iomedae will have questions and Evelyn does not, actually, feel like having to get into the political rifts between various Christian sects in the US right now. 

After the sermon is...mostly more hymns, actually, though there's a section set aside for recognizing various people's Contributions To The Community And God's Work. Evelyn used to occasionally get called up for those but it's...been a long time. Probably to get publicly recognized by the pastor, you need to not only do good works, but also show up on Sundays often enough to reliably be there for a callout. 

Afterward the children run back in (Lily had a wonderful time and made a PICTURE of a SHEPHERD) and there's tea and lemonade and cookies at the back. Evelyn has a lot of catching-up small talk to do with people who haven't seen her in months and would be inclined to stay for half an hour unless Iomedae seems restless. 

Iomedae really likes the story about the boy being killed in a horrible truck accident and his family having the abundance to forgive the people responsible and ensure they don't start to think of themselves in terms of the terrible mistake they made. That is correct, and she thinks a lot of what true holiness is; being someone who unravels in everyone else the knots and griefs and fears that keep them back from doing the right thing themselves. She is more confused by, but also likes, the story about people on opposite sides of some war being too angry with each other to recognize that in Axis they could sit down across a table from each other, and is gripped and appalled by the man in the story who says he'd rather go to Hell. 

("He wouldn't," she says audibly-to-Evelyn, at that part. "He wouldn't, if he really knew!")

When the sermon is over she is not in the mood for tea and lemonade and cookies but in the mood to pray silently in her pew for that man in particular, and then for everyone else and for God to fix Hell already. 

Then she'll get some tea and cookies, because she's very hungry. 

...Well, at least Iomedae isn't asking her a lot of questions about what exactly the people disagreeing were fighting about, though also, yeah, she's pretty sure people just use "I'd rather go to Hell" as a form of emphasis and that's kind of horrifying when you think about it.

She smiles and waves at Iomedae when Iomedae eventually stops praying and gets up for cookies. No wonder she's hungry, there was a whole bike ride and then a whole service and Iomedae didn't have croissants and didn't have a lot of pancakes. Lily is bouncing around fizzing with energy and very excited about shepherds and abundance and Costco. (Evelyn is once again deeply grateful that her church doesn't expect kids to sit through sermons.) 

     The pastor comes over to greet Evelyn and say how pleased he was to see her here. "And Jeremy too! It's been some time. And these must be your foster daughters?" 

Evelyn smiles back. "Well, you might be seeing a bit more of us for a while. My foster daughter Iomedae - the older girl - is very religious. Not - from here, we aren't sure what denomination, but she was happy to come here." 

    Nod. "She seems very sincere. It's wonderful to see in young people." 

It is slightly less wonderful if you're living with it including all the concerning parts of it, but Evelyn just smiles. "She's lovely. Practically the first conversation we had was about her wanting to work at a food bank to help the poor." Maaaaaybe she will not mention the fighting Hell part. If Iomedae mentions it then she'll...just have to see what happens. Probably it'll be fine. 

Iomedae smiles brightly at the priest but does not speak unless addressed because these people think she is a child and a child would not be so entitled.

Evelyn feels like perhaps something slightly concerning is going on in Iomedae's head, but she is also not feeling especially inclined to rock the boat right now. 

"So I'm sure we'll be back next week!" she says cheerfully. "All right, guys, we'd better head home and get some lunch before we're too hungry to bike that far." 

Jeremy will rustle up Lily, who is hiding under a tablecloth surprising random adults with exhortations to praise God and Costco (she sat SO STILL and was SO QUIET earlier and has used up all of her sitting still and quietly), and they can head out. 

Iomedae is slightly more competent at biking by the time they return to Evelyn's house. With not all of her attention consumed by not falling off the bike she has enough spare to be deeply confused about how it works; it has a bunch of clackety chains and metal parts. When she gets off it she gives it a searching look but the explanation is nonobvious. Probably it's a magic construct like cars.

Jeremy sees her peering at the chain and looks amused. "Wanna watch a video about how bikes work? Gears are neat." 

Evelyn will usher Lily in and start working on lunch. 

"I would like watch a video how bikes work!"

"A video of how bikes work, is the grammatical way to say it," Jeremy corrects, with a smile to soften the criticism. He felt weird and awkward about correcting Iomedae's English earlier, but she's picking things up so fast. 

He finds an instructional video on Youtube that looks to be aimed at sixth or seventh graders. It has lots of animated visualizations of gears turning, and works up through simple gears and pulleys to a video of an actual bicycle, starting with a simple one-speed kind and then progressing to a multi-geared bike and showing an animated cutout of the derailleur for changing gears, which is more confusing to follow. 

Iomedae is captivated. "Huh, it is not magic?"

"....Nnnno? I, uh, don't think magic is a real thing."

Oh no does her weird cult believe in literal magic. That's so awkward. It doesn't seem like it would be Cool Atlantis Jesus' deal but that isn't going to stop weird cult people, is it. 

"Maybe I pick the wrong word. I mean, it is not thing only wizards can do?"

"....No." Jeremy is genuinely unsure whether Iomedae is confused because her weird Atlantis Jesus sect believes magic is real or because of Harry Potter. "There - aren't any things like that. I mean, the first person to invent a bicycle had to be pretty smart, to come up with the idea, but - they're just made in factories now. Uh, do you know what factories are?"

Cool Atlantis Jesus would be really into factories, he thinks. Well, except for the child labor stuff, that's not very cool. 

"I do not know what factories are. ...God could do - raise islands out of sea. Make food and shelter in the time of darkness. Return from dead. Take armies to fight demon lord."

"- Yeah, okay, when God was a person I'm sure God could do crazy miracle things." That part is in the normal Bible and everything. "But none of the things you'll see in this house or on the computer are magic, we don't know how to do crazy miracle things, just how to make things. Out of stuff."

Youtube video of a factory assembly line with robots machining parts? 

That is extremely cool and Iomedae doesn't know enough about anything to know if it should violate her expectations about the universe or not! Prestidigitation is not crazy miracle things. She will not try to argue the point right this minute, anyway, except to point out "God still do miracle things through priests and holy warriors".