Thank You!

Where do I begin? Thank you first for your prayers. We've been blessed and surprised already and we've just completed two days of the conference. We arrived here Friday night during daylight, which was huge because some people did the drive in immense fog. We had one glitch after unloading some things from the van when the interior lights wouldn't go out. We of course were concerned about the battery, but they eventually went out. We were pleasantly surprised to find that they combined the children's class from age 3-5, which meant Miriam and Zach were in the same class. Prayer answered. Another huge prayer that has been answered is that Zach is consistently going to childcare and is enjoying it. Miriam continued to tell us the first night that this was a great vacation, and did she get to go back to her fun class again. They have just been going non-stop, so much so that Zach fell asleep at the dinner table tonight after eating his meal. It was good though because we still had another session after dinner to attend. It's 10:30 right now and I'm still waiting on him to fall asleep:)

We have had excellent sessions during the day and are being stretched and "impassionated" as one Albanian MC said. The title for our conference is Passioniate Pursuit: Renewing our Passion, Pursuing our Mission. Our main speaker so far has been a professor from Biola University names Eric Thoennes. Two of the main things I have remembered from him was: Every day remember the gospel and what it means for us, secondly, Peter and John couldn't stop talking about Jesus even when the religious leaders told them to, Acts 4:13 said the leaders knew that Peter and John were uneducated men, but they began to recognize they had been with Jesus. He spoke of what a compliment that would be, Jesus has changed you and others can tell you have been with Jesus. It made me look at myself and ask if people could tell I had been with Jesus. What a good challenge for all of us as believers.

Zach is finally asleep and I'm feeling close behind him. Aaron is off watching the Chargers-Patriots game on the big screen in the auditorium. Hopefully the feed is good and you can actually see the game.

Again, thank you for your prayers and we will try to update one more time at least. We are on a wireless connection in our room and the speed is not high so it is not allowing me to upload anymore pictures. The one above is from our time in the pool yesterday...more to follow later.