Tuesday, April 25, 2006

STMLC Exhaustion

This is how I feel

First off, I apologize for only posting 2 AudioBlogs. After I called them in, I checked this site and noticed they weren't up. Huh. So, I figured I had wasted my time. Obviously it must have just taken a while to get up. Oh well.

Second, thank you for your prayers. My back was great (although it has reverted to it's "old man state") and the conference was probably the best it has been in the 3 years I've attended. (A big thanks goes to my wife for her anal organizational skills.)

Speaking of Erin, even though she was behind the scenes, she received a few rave reviews on the STMLC evaluations. The people went out of their way to express their gratitude to Erin by name. GREAT JOB EMJ!

Me on the other hand, I was more visible and was able to incorporate my immature sense of humor to the presentations, and didn't get any special "thank you's" on the evaluations. Although I did have some people come up to me during the conference and say they liked my "youthfulness" while still being appropriate.

Erin and I had our own "it's over" celebration. We invited our next door neighbor with us to Chili's and got to know her a lot better and had a great time without any of the uncomfortable silences.

(FYI, in a future post, I'll have to write about our neighbor Shannon. She is a 26 year old military wife and her husband is in Iraq and has been since December. He is currently serving a year over there. Bella and Shannon's dog Cooper, who happens to be a 109 pound Rottweiler, are best friends and play all the time. It's quite the sight.)

I won't go into details about the conference since this post is already becoming quite long. But here are a few pictures to help give you a better idea of what went on.

STEM CEO Roger Peterson playing MC

Attendees were sometimes broken up into small groups to discuss "on-field senario" questions

STEM Team Leader Ramon Flores is "plugging" STEM in the exhibitor's room

Devotions leader Sammy Wanyonyi recharching our spiritual batteries as guest speaker Dave Gibson of Grace Church Eden Prairie looks on

One of the workshops taking place.

(Random Facts: The guy in the bottom right is our landlord from Haiti, Bob Stufflebeam. And since I am on a soccer kick (no pun intended) right now, I thought it was cool that the guy in the white dress shirt is 50+ and loves playing organized soccer and the lady in black is from Brazil and can't wait for World Cup 2006. I also met a huge MLS Chicago Fire fan.) Soccer brings the world together!

—b


Tuesday, April 25th, 2006/Luke chapters ???

ACCOUNTABILITY REPORT
Both yesterday and today, I fell asleep while attempting my daily Bible Study. I was able to make it up yesterday afternoon but I'm afraid I won't have time today as we have our small group Bible study tonight. I'm not giving up hope that I'll have time to spend with God alone though.


Copyright 2006, City Vision / John A. Mayer
You can purchase a copy of the CityView Report here.

BE IN PRAYER FOR:
THE UNREACHED PEOPLE IN THE TWIN CITIES

•• There are 25,000 Mormons living in the Twin Cities. The Twin Cities is also home to one of the few Mormon Temples in the world. The tricky thing about Mormons is they think they are Christians.
(Click here to learn more about what Mormons believe.)

3 comments:

Emily said...

Bernt,

It's so good to hear from you again! Thanks for updating us on the conference! The audio blog showed up right away for me! Anna listened to them too!

The other week, I was stopped on the street by a Mormon (with an American accent, I wish I asked him where he was from) and one of the questions he asked me was what church I went to. Since the LB church is unknown I said "any church that teaches the Bible as absolute truth and Jesus is the only way to heaven, " and he said "That's what we believe." I was thinking, "Not quite, Buddy," but just smiled. I'm not grounded on exactly what the Mormons believe and what's wrong with it and felt I would have only made worse by trying to tell him that they aren't Christians.

Well, I best be going.

All my love!
Em +-

Unknown said...

Yea, I would have done the same as you Em. I guess they believe the Bible but also what Joseph Smith added as well as two other books.

Mormons are greatly offended it we were to say they weren't Christians. I think the way to reach them is like any other non-believer, love them and show them that the Bible is the only TRUE word of God.

Now, how you do that is beyond me. But here is a cool link:

ChristianAnswers.net

—b

Emily said...

Thanks, Bernt.

Love,
Em