Hey everybody,
We made it! Left the “bury” at 5ish this morning, and made it to Pittsburgh by 11:30ish. Very little traffic on the way up, although we did see some snow remnants. We got checked into the hotel, got registered, had time for a quick lunch, then made into the 1st General Session. General Sessions are the big huge 
worship sessions for the conference. Here’s 4/5′s of us waiting for things to start. At the General Sessions, there will be a worship band, typically some type of musical entertainment, a speaker, and sometimes, a comedian or drama team. At GenSes1 we started out with a…how should I describe 
them…..almost a 50′s ish doo-woppie style swing band called NewWorldSon . I’d never heard them, but they were awesome. Very up-tempo and high energy. We then had Joe Castillo, the sand artist, and the best way I can describe him is he uses sand to draw with on a light box, which is then 
projected on the screen. Hopefully you’ll get the “picture” from the photo. This is our second time seeing Joe, and I truly can’t describe here how moving his message is. Our speaker for GenSes1 was Mike Pilavachi, a British youth leader, who is an unbelievable story teller, and speaker. Our worship 
band for GenSes1 was Starfield, a group I’ve heard several times, and last year, played at the OC Rally.
After GenSes1, we each went our separate ways to our first series of seminars. There is probably 100 different seminars you can choose from this weekend, so we certainly won’t want for more options.
By this time it was dinner, so we found a pizza place down the street a bit, and had the 2 pizza, 12 buffalo wing special.
After dinner it was back for GenSes2, which started out with Starfield as our worship band, followed by a first time happening in my 9-year NYWC experience. Instead of 1 speaker, we had 3, that each gave an 18 minute talk, followed by a time of discussion with our group, followed then by an opportunity to text message questions in for the speaker to answer. The first speaker spoke about listening to God’s whisper’s and following what He’s saying. The 2nd speaker talked about the church and it’s relationship (or lack of) with the Gay & Lesbian Community. The 3rd speaker spoke about how Racism and Prejudice affect our viewpoint and application of Christianity. My short snippets, by no means do justice for what all 3 had to say. All 3 of the speakers were excellent, and made all 5 of us have to really think about each of the subjects.
By this time it was 10pm, and our day was almost over. Tomorrow, Carla & Rob will be joining us, and I also have a special surprise for my peeps here in Pittsburgh. They have no clue, and I can’t wait!!!!
However, you’ll have to wait for tomorrow’s report….
Good Night & God Bless
Joel
