This past weekend was our church's missions conference, and I finally have the energy to write about it! There were ups and downs, and just a few kinks, but overall, I have to say it was an amazing, inspiring, humbling, and challenging event!
The weekend started off with a dinner on Friday night that was for our missionaries, our church staff, elders, deacons, and missions committee. i was very nervous about this event, because I had never planned a dinner event like this before, but it turned out to be my favorite part of the entire weekend. The food was delicious and we had a warm, intimate time with our missionaries, just sitting around and talking.
Saturday was our "get serious" part of the weekend. There were teaching sessions on evangelism and some great lessons on Acts 1:8. Traditionally, this verse is always taught from a geographic perspective - your "Jerusalem" is your family and friends, your "Judea" may be your neighborhood, and so on. We're trying to teach people to look at it from a cultural perspective - your "Jerusalem" are those people who are most like you in values, ideals, background, etc. and your "ends of the earth" are those who are the most different they could be from you, even if they live next door.
Saturday night was an evening of dinner parties with our Sunday School classes. We divided our missionaries and Sunday School classes into host homes and let them visit and share about their ministry. On Sunday morning, we stayed with our normal schedule and did the same idea as Saturday night - missionaries were assigned to different classes to share. our whole goal for the weekend was to allow our members to be exposed to as many missionaries as we could. We ended the weekend on Sunday night with an incredible prayer and praise service where we broke into groups of 3 or 4 and just spent time in prayer for our partners in ministry.
It was a busy weekend as you can tell, but it was such a blessed event, too! I'm doing one of Beth Moore's Bible studies and last night in her video lesson, she spoke about how we should be involved in ministry work that we know was only possible with the power of the Spirit. That's how I felt about this weekend! There is no reason I should have been able to work on this weekend with no energy, growing a baby, and watching 3 small kids. It was truly a "Spirit work" and I felt so thankful to be a part of it! Steve is very thankful to have his wife back, too!
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