Cocaine, Communists and Conversions

Our missions conference this week was incredible. It was my first, obviously, so I had no idea what to expect. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we enjoyed several missions oriented messages in chapel. On Tuesday and Wednesday we also attended class sessions taught by visiting missionaries on a topic of their choice. On Tuesday I attended a session on discipling and one on Columbia entitled “cocaine, communists and conversions.” On Wednesday I attended a session taught by a missionary who is translating the bible for the remote village he ministers in and one by an older gentleman who broadcasts Bible messages to Muslims in North Africa.

I really could say so much about what I’ve learned from this missions conference but I don’t have time to type nor memory to recall it all. I will say that the greatest challenge God put on my heart was that I wasn’t fully open to the idea of being a missionary. I never have felt called to missions and I still don’t but I can say that at the beginning of the conference I wasn’t even open to the idea. Regardless of whether or not God wants to use Katie and I as missionaries, I do know he wants us to be open and willing to serve in any area he calls us. The second greatest challenge I received was to be willing to witness to anyone anywhere. One of the speakers presented the idea that “missions” and “evangelism” don’t begin when you arrive in a foreign country, nor do they cease when a missionary retires. It is our duty as followers of Christ to share the hope of salvation that is in us at any opportunity we receive. Overall this week has been a very helpful experience. Thursday we returned to our normal school schedule to do the same things we had done before the conference but this time with more zeal.

As I write this on Thursday night Katie is attending a cooking class with some friends at our church. I sit at home like a lonely bachelor in a large house, just tapping away at the keyboard. With Katie gone I had nobody to talk to so I settled for you…no offense.

By the way, we did manage to get the clean your room video from coffeehouse. Unfortunately we could not successfully upload it to the internet. After many failed attempts I decided to put it to rest for now.

I Has Coffeeee

Coffeehouse was a blast on Thursday night. The turnout was obviously much greater than even the hosts expected. It was held in the school’s dining hall, whose walls seemed to buckle due to the large crowd. The theme for this years coffeehouse was a triathlon, because it was composed of three main parts. The first part was the showing of a “clean your room” video. The deans wanted a way to illustrate how the dorm students should clean their room, so at the beginning of the year they encouraged the students to make their own instructional videos. Creativity ran wild and instructions were bare minimum but it sure was fun to watch. I wanted to have the video to show everyone but I haven’t had a chance to ask the producer yet.

The second part was an assortment of skits performed by our theatrically inclined classmates. We were able to captures a little bit of the skits and we now make them available for your viewing pleasure.

Unfortunately we don’t have a camcorder so we couldn’t do any hardcore videotaping, just what could be done on our digital camera. The third event was an artwork judging. Every table in the room was lined with paper when we arrived and it was our duty, before and during the ceremonies, to doodle, draw and create whatever we could with crayons. A picture of the winner is featured at the top of the post. Here is what Katie and I drew.


That was the highlight of the end of our week. Saturday afternoon begins our weekend because we always work on Saturday morning. We are looking forward to relaxing this weekend and the beginning of next week because there are no classes Monday, Tuesday of Wednesday.