More On The Preteen Conference

Some more I gleaned from the preteen leaders conference last week:

Awesome to see the recent room upgrades.  Love the theme.  Also think the painting/design on the floor was super.  Gives me some ideas of how I can make little changes to our area, which is al we can do at the moment.  Long term vision is a complete upgrade a few years from now.

Sean’s talk on tearing down idols was good.  Lets face it, we all have them.  Bottom line is that God is the one who changes lives, not our creativity and over the top programs.  When we make him priority number one, he does awesome things in our lives and ministry.

Loved eating lunch/dinner together with others at the conference.  Food was good and it was a great opportunity to hangout and get to know others.

Craig Jutila’s talk was super.  It was about how to balance family and ministry.  Needed to hear that message again.

I also got a chance to go with a few people over to Nate Cumming’s church down the road and check out his preteen room.  Something about seeing other ministries’ facility that is helpful.  Thanks Nate for letting us check it out.

Lastly, relationships at the conference was a key factor for me.  Over the past year I’ve formed a friendship with 5 or 6 preteens leaders.  We all live different places throughout the country but talk on Skype once a month and email each other all the time.  We text and talk over the phone individually as well.  It was great to all hang out together at the conference.

One more thing.  I loved the downtime at the conference. I purposely took both mornings off and went to Barnes and Noble to read and sip a cup of Java.  Slept in, spent a few minutes with my kids and then off for ME time.  I never do that in my normal life.  Life is busy with my own kids.  So, I soaked up some much needed ME time and didn’t feel guilty missing some of the conference to do it.

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