Women of Faith 2012

August 3-4 was the Women of Faith conference in Columbus. Sufficient Grace Ministries again took a group of women and we had a blast!

My friend Mattie came down the night before and it was so great to see her because I hadn’t seen her since the Women of Faith conference last April. We went down earlier on Friday this year to volunteer as part of the distribution team, which means we distributed the bags to all of the seats in the arena. We were supposed to be there from 10:30-2 but we finished around 12:30pm. The perk of volunteering was getting free premium seating. Each volunteer got 2 free tickets so all of the SGM group went to the conference for free since there were 10 of us and 5 volunteered. Only later did we found out that this year we did not get premium seating. They stuck us up in the nosebleed section but thanks to Kelly we got closer seating. Not what we should have had, but better.

After we were done volunteering, Mattie and I went my friend Erin’s way to pick up Evanee (her neighbor watched her). We visited with Erin and Ava a little bit and then we went to check into our hotel.

We had decided beforehand that the group would eat at the Cheesecake Factory. Erin and Ava also met up with us there to eat. We ate around 4:30pm so we’d have plenty of time (or so we thought) before the start of the conference at 7pm.

While at the Cheesecake Factory we enjoyed fun and fellowship with each other and some very good food!!

Went to the conference after eating and had a great time. Missed the first few minutes because of the seating fiasco  but Kelly took care of it and we got better seats.

We went back to the hotel after and Mattie and I prolly got to bed around midnight and were up at 6:30am. Mattie and I left before the rest to search for some food but there was none around in that area even though there were a ton of hotels. Why would there not be restaurants with like 20 hotels around!? We drove towards the arena and stopped through a McDonald’s on the way and got some cinnamelts.

Sidenote: The GPS in my van was wonky all weekend and I swear we missed like 20 turns because of the darn thing. We always made it eventually in the end though.

When Mattie and I got to our seats there was a bag sitting there and I was wondering what it was and saw that it was from World Vision to sponsor a child. Anthony and I already sponsor Shalini from India through Compassion so I had no intention to sponsor another but when I saw the date it felt like I was meant to. Her birthday is April 25, 2009, which is just a day after Carleigh’s due date. Mattie also sponsored a little girl from Honduras. :)

We watched some painter guy (totally forget his name) paint a portrait of Jesus. He sort of told a story while he did it and it was really neat to watch.

When it was time for lunch we went outside the arena to go to a place as we didn’t do box lunches this year. We went to a place called the Three-Legged Mare and waited FOREVER for someone to take our order but they never came. Even people who came after us had food! Needless to say we left and just grabbed some food from the concessions inside the area. I got a hot dog.

Overall we had great speakers and they certainly made us laugh. We got concerts from Mandisa and Amy Grant (below). There were definitely some emotional moments and I thought of Carleigh a lot and missed her.

We all had a fantastic time and I’m already looking forward to next year!