Online Bible Study Wednesday night . . . about halfway through and the power goes out! What to do?
No power? No problem!
Martin Luther once said: “The world is like a drunken peasant. If you lift him into the saddle on one side, he will fall off on the other side.” These are the chronicles, thoughts, and questions of a Lutheran pastor just struggling to stay on his theological horse, and not fall off one side or the other.
Online Bible Study Wednesday night . . . about halfway through and the power goes out! What to do?
No power? No problem!
The last day of the conference! It is only a half day to enable groups to get on the road back home. So after breakfast is the final plenary session followed by the closing Divine Service. This closing service is great for me as everything is done, now we get one more time to receive the gifts and rejoice.
In this last plenary session, we find out which tetramorph team got the most points and so won the team competition. Here are the results:
Day Three at Higher Things is much like Day Two, except that the routine is now easier, things are flowing a little better, and the kids are more excited (and tired!). Two breakaways again today, and I taught mine for the second time - which went better, as it always does. :-) The kids also have a little more free time in the evening this last night, and are busy earning points for our tetramorph team.
One of the ways to earn points was in the Talent Show. Robert played a piano piece and Cyrus and Dan performed a rap written by Cyrus about the four tetramorphs! It really was quite good. The performance was a bit timid (hard to do in front of a lot of people and judges), but the judges gave them an honorable mention (aka 4th place) for the inventiveness of the rap, and with that, 50 points for our team. I must say, the level of talent was high and the competition stiff.
A few more pictures . . .
Day 2 was the "Conference Shirt Day" - the day everyone (almost) wears their conference shirt. So we took our group picture that day:
Today was the first full day. Matins, Vespers, Evening Prayer, and Compline services. One plenary and two breakaways. I taught today in one of the breakaways. It went okay. Had a room full of youth and stayed extra about 20-25 minutes to answer questions afterward. We had a few other matters to deal with, but all-in-all a full but good day.
One of the free time activities in the evening was painting. Here's some of our group taking part in that:
Monday night was hot. HOT! The dorms did not have air conditioning. Many brought fans. Some bought fans after they arrived. And some of the youth . . .
So first, apologies that I did not keep up with posting this week! I really was just too busy. Every day was full, and what little downtime I had was spent trying to get sermons written for Sunday and Monday's funeral. But I'll try to catch up and tell you about the week . . .
Monday morning: unload the truck and set-up.
Higher Things has a box truck and it is FULL of stuff! Pretty much everything we need, we bring with us. So there's a lot to unload and sort and get to where it needs to go. The nice things about this conference is that almost everything (chapel, plenaries, breakaway sessions, merch, and HQ) was in the same building, so the truck didn't have to drive from place to place - which is the way it often is.
After unloading, the rest of the day was spent unpacking, sorting, finding what we needed, figuring out how to set-up a chapel space, thinking through logistics, and getting things ready for the Opening Service on Tuesday. All this was because we didn't actually have a chapel to use - we had to use the auditorium and turn it into a worshipful space.
Oh, and we also had to move me down from the Staff dorm to the dorm where my group would be staying. It was a full day!
I was assigned a CCV (Conference College Volunteer) who worked with me in the chapel all week. Her name was Magdalena and - bonus! - I knew her father at the Seminary and she is friends with my daughter! She was a BIG help, since I didn't have any summer vicars or deaconess interns this year. She, the organist, and I pretty much ran the chapel for the week. (Sadly, I did not take any pictures of the chapel set-up to show you!)