46th CCCWC

It's really hard to know what to say when people ask me how winter conference was. I find myself giving the typical "really good" answer for anyone who asks but in reality I cannot describe the experience in a spectrum of Good to Bad. Rather it was quite the experience that combined all my senses and cannot be reproduced in a simple "here is what I learned from Conference". So I shall try to write what I have experienced so that I may not forget and jumble up my answer and also for you, the reader to read.

The first big thing that was an over arching theme during this conference for me was 'community'. I think the word first popped into my head when the speaker, Dr. Philemon Choi was giving a talk on community and I think it was caring for others around you. I put that word away and didn't think too much on it. Then there was an evening of worship before the talk and it was a few days in so the people were more relaxed and less tense. There was an atmosphere there. Very strange but beautiful. It struck me as I sang from the back of the room that these people around me love and experience the same God I do and in return he loves them as much as he loves me. Beautiful. It reminded me of when Pastor Todd talked about attending our combined service and not knowing how to sing the chinese songs and simply letting the chinese congregation carry him in worship. It was astounding how we all worship together and this thought really contrasted what I and I expect many of us experience in our younger years at conference of a sense of individual worship and individual encounters with the Lord. Those moments where they tell you to pretend there is no one is around you and you can just worship God freely. But this was a moment in which I was very aware that there were people around me. People I cared about and cared about me and people who I would care if they thought a certian way about me regardless of what the worship leader says but still...in that moment we, together, were praising a God who loves us equally and that is such a beautiful thought.

It reminds me of the psalms I am reading. Although it has alot of "I" and "me" in it, it has alot of "us" and "our fathers" and this sense of communal worship. Kind of like how we all take communion together. We share in this inheritance and that is one of the things I got to experience at this 46th Conference.

There are a few more but I shall leave those for later and head off.
Adios