26 to 26: My Weekend

I know that I made a promise.

I know that I said that I would finish this.

I intend to.

It’s just, this past weekend was a little crazy and a whole lot of wonderful.

In the spring, I was invited to help out with administration for the Simply Worship Conference—a conference for worship and tech teams from New England churches. This was their third year running the event but this was a year that they were really looking to grow.

What was last year a conference of 150, this year grew to be a conference of 400.

I spent Friday walking the halls of a massive church and stuffing goody bags and assembling name tags and poking fun at my new friend, Tommy.

Saturday started at 4:30 am and ended at 11:30 pm.  The time in between was stuffed full of driving and coffee and coordinating volunteers and coffee and answering questions and checking in registrants and schmoozing with presenters and vendors and making more coffee and finally, a concert.

And then stacking chairs and cleaning up and stealing snooty Perrier from the Green Room and  a long drive home followed by lots of the sleeps.

Honestly, it was a little crazy seeing so many ministries and churches from New England represented in one place at one time. It was a humbling reminder that God is still very much alive, very much active, and very much busy here in the Northeast. It was inspiring to hear stories from tiny churches to I-didn’t-think-churches-in-New-England-got-so-big churches about how God is moving in their communities and congregations.

And to have this one day, this one time to educate and encourage and serve people who spend so much time serving their congregations from the stage (or the sound booth). It felt like such a blessing to be a blessing to others.

Not to mention the volunteers. Oh! The volunteers. It’s always wonderful to meet wonderful people. Like, really truly fun, beautiful, lovely, genuine people. I made a few new friends.

I realize that this puts me three days behind both in sleep and blog posts. So, here are three tid-bits I picked up this weekend:

1. Working at camp equips you to do just about everything/anything. Stacking chairs? I don’t bat an eye. Coordinating volunteers? Yes, thank you. Fielding 400 questions? I’ll pretend that I know the answers. Remaining calm in crisis? Bring on the crazies. As weird and taxing and undefined working at camp can sometimes feel, it sure prepares you for just about anything.
2. Parents are awesome. My parents took care of my dog most of Friday and all day Saturday. This began when I left at 5 am and Olive decided to bark for an hour. My mom finally managed to snuggle her back to sleep. Thanks, mom.
3. Wear sensible shoes. Hah. This is a lesson that I will probably never really learn. It’s kind of my thing, to never be wearing appropriate footwear.