Exhibition

One great part of the General Assembly, and there were many, was the exhibition hall. On the first day, Jourdyn and I walked out with two tote bags full of free stuff...t-shirts, backpacks, the tote bags themselves, keychains, pins, post-its, stickers, etc. All of the Nazarene colleges and seminaries were in some way represented. They gave us this passport type thing. We had to go around and find the stickers for all the schools. Once completed, which was no easy task, there were about 50 of them, we received a free prize - a fanny pack! Which I would normally NEVER use but it came in handy during our trip to Sea World and now Nadine will have hours of fun with it!

There were booths for so many things. It was quite overwhelming actually to see how much and how involved the Church of the Nazarene is in compassionate ministries, disasters ministries, missions around the world, education, as well many other things. I was moved by a sense of the reality that actions speak louder than words. At these booths and during the many seminars that I participated in, I was encouraged by not only the women ministers that were present and that I was able to speak with, but also the amount of men who were supportive and encouraging to my ministry. I was able to have rich and deep conversations with many pastors about my ministry today and where God is going to use me.

Another exciting part of this whole trip was that I was able to meet many of my professors and leadership from school, as well as three of my colleagues - Hans, Greg and Rich! We've been together for two years now and have never really spoke face-to-face or met, so it was definitely a blessing to finally meet them. I took a seminar called 3M: From Monument to Mission to Movement with Hans, unplanned, just realized we were both there in the room and then was able to worship later with his family. Greg, I recognized in the concourse and met his family. We ran into each other several times throughout because we both had a child (or in his case children) there. Rich and I connected on Friday morning via cell and purposely took a seminar together, Pastoring Men. It was a great course, I learned a lot. He and I befriended a Scotsman, named The Reverend Tommy Goodwin, Chaplain in her majesties Royal Navy. We had a great discussion discipleship, men, marrying our daughters to Scotsman and wearing kilts. I also was able to meet Rich's wife, Tawnya.

It was amazing how many people were there and how friendly everyone was. I've never experienced anything like it. It was as if I knew any given person there for years, it was as if they were family!

These photos were taken over the whole trip. On Thursday, Jourdyn spent most of her day in the NazKidz Convention where she learned how to Speed Stack. She had a lot of fun! Make sure you check out the balloon creations! I've never seen anything like them. That is a whole ministry for kids called Big Blast!

By the end of it all, we had three totes full of all the free stuff and had to put them in Tammy's car for her to bring home, so we didn't have to pay to check baggage!