[Thursday] EL evening service and adult people

The woman doing the readings was very soft-spoken, which I found disconcerting and frustrating.  Both Lauren and Pastor Saling came in a few minutes after service started, but apparently they got the evening off.  (The pastor was wearing jeans, and when I talked to him afterward he said it was the International Day of Prayer and he'd been in "preacher duds" -- his phrase -- all day.)

Scripture Readings:
    John 3:1-21
Oh, John.
"¹³No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.^{[Some manuscripts Man, who is in heaven]}"
"¹⁷For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.^{[Or God's only begotten Son]}"
Makes universalist belief seem mighty untenable.
    Exodus 19:1-6

Meditation:
Experiencing God Day-By-Day by Henry T. Blackaby and Richard Blackaby
"God Brings You To Himself"

I had my eyes closed through a lot of the service-- trying to focus on other than the fact that the reader annoyed me -- and totally zoned during the meditation reading.  Oops.

The "Prayers of the People" were listed as "Intercessory Prayer," which is not inaccurate but I have issues with the idea of intercessory prayer, so having it explicitly named as such makes me uncomfortable because it takes away [from] my ability to be in the prayers in other ways that I am more comfortable.

The pastor chatted with me a bit afterward, but I didn't get a hug, and I was wondering last week as well, how do people like sk8eeyore get these close mentor people?  Pastors are always so busy with everything, on the way from the train station I was thinking, "I'm not sweet/clever/interesting/whatever *enough* to merit the extra effort."  This of course goes back to my issues making friends more generally.