not what I'd intended

I had big plans for Saturday that I was super excited about:
school!
(It may or may not be stretching the truth to say that I was excited, but I'll let you be the judge of that...)

In any case, what happened was just about as unlike school as I could have imagined.
Friday afternoon Mr Mike was walking past my desk. He popped his head back in and said "How old are you?" I told him that I was 19 and he asked if I wanted to go to the Passion conference. "When?" "In a few hours." I considered it briefly, because I didn't have a lot of time to think about it, and agreed. I got off work early and headed home to pack. Twelve minutes at home to pack, and I was off again, heading to the church to meet Christina. We got directions from her dad, and got in her car. Yes, just the two of us, to Atlanta. It took a little over five hours, because traffic was really slow near Augusta... so we got there an hour late (@ 8:30). Found seats in the arena - it was huge!

Chris Tomlin was leading worship when we came in. Louie Giglio taught after that. He talked about what the name means, talked a lot about God, and shared some stories. He said that Passion doesn't exist to make CDs and neither does he. He lives to glorify God. That was the point of the lesson... not to do good things for God, but to live to glorify Him... basically all things will come after that, but our only aim is to glorify God - that's why we were created. After the lesson (and after every lesson after that) there was a time of silence, to reflect and pray about what had been taught and what we needed to do. That was absolutely amazing! David Crowder led worship after that, breaking the silence :) But he also did something that was pretty neat: during the bridge of one song (can't remember what it was) he had us sing it once through... in our hearts. It sounds a little strange, but I got chills as we "sang" silently. It was so neat (I want to do that at FLOW).
It took us about an hour and a half to get out of the parking lot (fyi, there were 10,000 people there...) and to my aunt and uncle's house in Peachtree City, which gave us time to talk about what we had learned. I think we made it there at around 1am, made a little small talk, and then went to bed. It's amazing how comfortable beds are when you're dead tired.

In the morning, we had eggs, grits and cinnamon rolls for breakfast with my aunt, uncle, and cousins. Christina and I confessed to one another later that we don't like grits, but you wouldn't have known because we ate them without a face (when I told Dad this [he loves grits and has tried for years to make me affectionate toward them] he laughed and said that the "Mission-trip eat-everything-on-your-plate" thing had paid off). We left at around 9, which was bad because the first session started at 10, and we had to go and buy socks and towels to donate to a ministry in the Philippines (it was a requirement for the conference). After a quick stop at Target, we headed back to Atlanta. We were already late, but traffic was way backed up so we got there 45 minutes late. Again, we made it during the worship. Charlie Hall was leading. The lesson was by a guy named Francis, who taught about the Holy Spirit in a way I'd never really thought about. There was the silence after the lesson again, and then we were dismissed for lunch.

The trucks that had been bringing our boxed lunches was running four hours late so instead of everyone having those for lunch, they switched the schedule and had us leave for lunch and eat boxed dinners instead. It was to our advantage that Christina and I weren't part of a big church group, because there were so many of us, so we decided to go to an Italian restaurant and got seated right away (the group of 23 behind us had a mild wait). It was a good lunch, but it didn't take up a lot of time, so we sat in the car for almost an hour waiting for the doors of the Arena to open.

The afternoon session's worship was led by David Crowder. Then Louie taught a follow up to what he'd talked about Friday. We were then dismissed again to get our box lun.... er, dinners. They were literal boxes... we found that pretty funny. We ate dinner and had a ton of time to fill so we went to Kroger... it was so crowded with college students. They were in the Starbucks, hanging around the aisles, lounging on the porch furniture for sale, browsing the store... I'm sure regular shoppers wondered who the people with the orange arm bands and the name tags were. We loaded up on snacks for the trip home, and rested in the car for about 45 more minutes.

When the doors finally opened, we were instructed to be silent in the big room. Ten thousand people silent people in a room. There were a lot of open Bibles and journals and people just openly praying. Then the lights went off and a presentation began... nearly identical to the silence and solitude lesson at FLOW... about silence and worshiping God and the gospel and... wow. It was really amazing. David Crowder broke the silence once again and we sang to God. Chris Tomlin came up after him and did some more... I really liked the way worship went with both of them - it didn't matter that they were Chris Tomlin and David Crowder - they were just people leading other people in worship. They had fun and did cool effects, but that wasn't the point and that was made so clear. I really liked that because so many times it seems like a show... they weren't making it into a publicity stunt though. The music ended with the hymn Amazing Grace. Louie was just beginning his lesson at nine, but we had to leave to drive back to Beaufort. I'm sure that session was great too; I'm glad we were there for the worship at least... it was so neat praising God there.

The drive was uneventful after an interesting stop at the gas station (one of those "creepy" gas stations... with creepy people outside who yelled at Christina in Spanish because I guess they thought she'd understand it). We got back about five till two this morning and stayed at the Brant's guest house. Too early, we rolled out of bed to get ready for church. I'm sure that we looked bad this morning but our gracious friends didn't comment :)

It was a great weekend, minus the lack of sleep. The conference was refreshing and the silence was so neat. It wasn't what I'd intended, but that's just another example that my plans aren't the only way and that God's are better. I would have missed out on so much (and so would Christina... she couldn't go alone!) if I had stuck to what I'd intended to do. I so enjoyed the fellowship with Christina and the worship and the lessons... but I most enjoyed the time with God.

Pictures... (which wouldn't format correctly in the text so I put them at the bottom...)