I'm back!

The conference was awesome! I could feel everybody's prayers and it kept me humble! I was the team assistant for Turquoise 2 and the team leader was Stephanie S. from Houston. We had 7 moms and 9 girls (two of the moms brought two daughters). I will post a chronological narrative once I get pictures over here and get lessons from Samuel (he somehow managed to post pictures on his blog.) For now I'll do highlights.

Y'all remember when Kent, Erica, Naomi, Dad, and I all went to a father/daughter conference right after Thanksgiving? Christina Mac. put it on and did a beautiful skit called the 3 weavers' daughters. Well she did it again for the COMMIT conference and it was beautiful again! Right after that (in the same session) was 'Story time with Mr. Reed'. He read a story that he had actually written about a girl and 4 mirrors that just moved me to tears. He is emailing a copy to anyone who wants one so I'll ask permission to post it here. And then 3 of the Reed sisters (Christianna- who went and got married so she's not really a Reed-, Michelle, and Charity) got up together and talked about siblings. It was knock you down funny! Something Charity said reminded me so much of our family. "If I'm having a bad time I know I can find or call any one of my sisters and no matter what they'll say 'You're right, you're wonderful,' you're beautiful.' " My family is like that. We're convinced we're all perfect (and we really are.) So that session was my favorite.

Another highlight was having communion with 304 other people Sunday morning. The training center staff and long-term residents bus themselves to local churches but nobody wanted to bus all 305 (estimate) COMMIT people to a church so we had our own service. It was really moving. We sang, Mr. Reed talked about how we all have a Mary side and a Martha side, we sang some more, and then had a communion and altar time.

Friday and Saturday afternoon had 3 hours of electives: several sessions to pick from but you could also go on a walk or take a nap. We especially encouraged the moms and daughters to use this time to visit. I did choir during one the of the hours each afternoon. It was so much fun! Kira and Gabrielle Dutz. (twins, I think identical) did the worship music and choir for us. We teased eachother a lot but we did sound really good for two performances with only two hours of practice. We were a large group, too. Enought to have first and second sopranoes and first and second altos. We sang On Eagle's Wings and Oh, be joyful! and You be latte deo. That's latin for rejoice in God and I'm spelling it phonetically.

Another highlight was Christianna and her new husband Darryl talking about the dating game and how they met. It was really funny and very touching and Darryl did very well. I'm not sure if he's ever gotten up and spoke before. I know it was his first COMMIT. And on top of that Christianna is such a good speaker (and funny!!) that it must be hard to be on stage with her. Christianna has either Lymes Disease or a muscle disorder for about 10 years now. She is in constant pain and kept telling Darryl that there was no point because she was so ill. And he said that if they were only marrried for a week or if he had to spoon feed her for years that it would be wonderful. Everybody say 'Ahhhhhh!'

They want me to go do the dishes. More later!