Global Outreach Conference

It was so wonderful to visit my sending church and participate as one of the missionaries at their Global Outreach conference in September.

First, I praise the Lord that I was able to make it there.  After landing in Baltimore to change planes, a lightening storm came up that struck the tower!  In other words, after waiting a while on the plane, my flight was canceled.  I was #3 standby for the only other flight that night, standby for the morning and only guaranteed a seat by the next afternoon.  I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make it to the Friday night mixer with the elders and missions team, but hopeful as I had left time for travel delays by leaving Thursday.  Trusting the Lord to provide.   After that 9-hour layover, I know why people love one-way tickets!  I did make it out that Thursday night, after they found a crew for the flight. =)

Friday night was great to visit with the leadership.

Saturday morning I shared with the ladies and enjoyed hearing Michelle Shinabery’s testimony.

It was also neat to hear from Abby about CRU.  So neat to hear about some of the new ways of reaching out to this generation with visual cards.  You show about 50 cards and ask a few questions — it makes it easy to jump into conversation and gives a visual connection.  Soularium is a survey tool they use on campus to see what people are thinking.

Another one is perspective cards. These cards you can use to help guide spiritual discussion with people by finding out what they think truth comes from, what they think God is like etc.  It is like a multiple choice.  Just some neat tools people are using to reach campuses.

We also enjoyed hearing from Ron Blue about the Great Commission.

The sharing times went well.  I was concerned about – did I choose the right things to share? – and was encouraged by a couple ladies that said they really appreciated what I shared and feel like they understand my ministry more now.

The last session I was able to introduce various team members on communications – hopefully I can do a few blog posts about my co-workers too in the coming days!

Thanks for praying – the conference went great.