As promised to /u/BEE_REAL_ :

Tales from Growing Up Pentecostal Church

Sister Della

So there was this little old lady in the church named Sister Della. She was like 8000 years old and smelled like mothballs and flowers, but she was very sweet. She always had candy in her purse (her "pocketbook" as she called it), but it was always gross hard candy that tasted like it had been sitting in a candy bowl for the past thirty years or so.

Every now and then when "the Holy Ghost would get all over her," she'd jump up out of her church pew and dance, and by dance, I mean she would spin around frantically while whipping her head back and forth. This would cause one of the hundreds (thousands?) of bobby pins in her hair to go flying like bullets. A kid got hit in the eye with one once.

The Devil

Sometimes during our church services, people would fall down on the floor and writhe around and holler. They were (I guess) possessed or something. Usually, big burly dudes in the church would pick them up and physically carry them out to one of the back rooms where they did exorcisms.

I remember this one time where was super young and the preacher was talking about demons and this one lady fell on the floor and started screaming and crying and stuff. We had just learned the story of Legion) in Sunday School, where Jesus cast the demons out of the man and into the pigs, and I was really scared that if the demons got out of that woman, they'd come into me, so for the next thirty seconds or so (or until they dragged her out of the sanctuary), I covered my ears, nose, and mouth so the demons couldn't enter through one of my face holes. I almost passed out.

Gayness

When I was in bible college back in the day, I was struggling pretty hard with being a 'mo. (Incidentally, the male dorms at bible colleges are the most homoerotic places you'll ever go to in your life, moreso at Pentecostal bible colleges.) Anyway, I lost my virginity my second year of bible college...

...to a dude.

He was the son of a pastor at the church I attended and we defiled my dorm room for the better part of my second year.

I broke it off with him because I was super guilty and went into gay reparative therapy, which was a whole barrel of fun. (So fun I did it twice.) Spoiler: gay reparative therapy doesn't work, kids.

I looked him up a few years ago: He's married now with a bunch of kids and works at that church last I heard. Joke's on him, tho. I'm in grad school and posting dank econ may-mays with you nerds now.