Mid Year Conferences

We were in Thailand for almost two weeks for conferences and development classes. I was blessed to get to take part in two conferences... one was for our first and second year interns and the other was for all staff from our country.

Intern Conference

The intern conference was a time of refreshing for me. I always enjoy getting to be around the interns. Most of them are fresh out of college, and their excitement and enthusiasm, as I have mentioned in previous posts and letters, is contagious. This was a smaller conference, and it was good to hear personal stories about how the Lord has been at work in the lives of these interns and in the lives of students on the campuses where they serve. It has truly been a blessing for me to serve with these young men and women this year.

All Staff Conference

This conference was also a time of being refreshed, but in a different way. The blessings from this conference came in several areas:

1. Worshipping Openly: For some of us, this is the only time of the year that we can freely gather and worship together. A band from the Philippines led worship for the conference. I was constantly amazed to look around me and see all of these people worshipping together.



2. Connecting with old friends: The theme of the conference this year was “One Family”, and it really does feel like a family here. This conference gave us the opportunity to connect with some people whom we don’t see very often, but have come to love very much.

One of my favorite connections this year was with a Korean who was on my campus my first year here. I had not seen him since that year, and this year I got to reconnect with him and meet his wife. For those of you who have been around since the beginning (’02), you might remember me writing about this guy…well, I think I remember writing about him. I didn’t know for sure that he was working with us for the first month we were in class together because Koreans were on a separate team (they didn’t speak English). For the first month of class, neither one of us spoke the language here either. I knew he was a believer because he would hold his Bible under his desk and read it during class breaks. For that month, we could basically only communicate using charades and laughter. We laughed A LOT. Now we both communicate much more easily in the language here, so it was especially cool to get to understand each other almost fully when we saw each other this year.

3. Getting the Big Picture: It’s often difficult to see how things are going down in the trenches. This was a time to get a bird’s eye view from our leadership of how things have been going, and also to hear in person the direction that those leaders believe the Lord is leading us in as a ministry

Development Class





I served as the Teaching Assistant for a class called Transforming Cities. The class was taught by Dr. Eric Swanson (co-author of The Externally Focused Church and Living a Life on Loan). I REALLY liked this class, but I won’t go into too many details here. If the class title interests you, you can find out more information from the following links:

Eric’s blog: www.ericswanson.blogspot.com

The Externally Focused Church

Externally Focused Church Conference ‘08