Sunday, April 13, 2008

Life in a nutshell: Women's conference

In case you were dying to know, here's my recap from the Women's Conference two weekends ago:

After racing around to try and get to the departure place on time (including rescheduling a meeting and various other contortions), I was still late. It was raining/sleeting/snowing on the way to Chicago...nice relaxing drive, yah right :) But we made it, right on time.

The conference itself was amazing. The speakers were very powerful--the theme was "Run It 2 Win". Lots of great women preachers, with good worship and ministry time. The ministry time was almost too much--some congregations/individuals are a little more "dramatically supernatural" than ours, but God was DEFINITELY doing stuff in people's lives. We saw a demon being cast out, and heard God birthing lots of new life and new projects in people's lives--the sound effects were more than I'm used to, but when people are expecting the Holy Spirit, s/he definitely shows up! There'd be an altar call at the end of a session, and there would be more people at the front than left in the pews--and some of us in the pews were getting prayer from people we knew instead of going up. I got some prayer about the pregnancy, which was very good and powerful.

It was fun hanging out with the women from our church, though I'm at such a different place than all of them. I was rooming with two college students, a chemistry grad student, and a stay at home mom (for one night). Lots of good connections and growing, though. My working (especially as a college prof in the sciences) is much better accepted than it was at our previous church where I felt like I had leprosy, but it's still a little wierd to be the only full time working mom. Wait, I guess Becky W. is a FT working mom too, but I didn't really have any opportunities to talk to her.

I did skip one of the sessions and walked to the mall--it was good to have some alone/God time to process a conversation. Jonell, I have a bunch of stuff I should have said before we left--we'll have to have a coke or lunch and talk about it.

All in all it was a good, refreshing time, but the craziness before I went and immediately afterwards made me question the sanity of going. I'm still trying to get caught up several weeks later (thus the suffering blog :)).

5 comments:

The Rock Star said...

Ok! :)

Though, I will get a Diet Pepsi! ;)

Kim said...

Thanks for sharing. It sounds like your experience is in line with many that I talked to.

Kelsey said...

Ann, have you met my sister? Her name is Shannon and she has been coming to RVC lately...I think the two of you would get along really well. I will have to introduce you!

mexicanmasala said...

Women's conferences seem amazing. I have never done an altar call,but would also prefer women I know to pray for me in that situation.

Anonymous said...

I'm so happy the conference went well. And it is okay to have alone time at these things. Even when The Holy Spirit is present and everything else is going great, it is still tiring on a body. The noise and crowds take a lot out of you. The last one daughter and I attended, we snuck out before the last session to have some quality one on one time together.
Mama Bear