Miss Me?

Guess it's time to rap up the conference week posts. That's more than I did for the New York trip (ummmmm sorry about that).

On Thursday, I started hearing rumors that a dude from Peoria popped up working in the church book store. We checked it out and shore 'nuf, Caleb had run oft to Purdue and I never even knew it. He used to spend alot of time with hoodies like Albertson down the street, and has now found a home base at Faith while attending school. Great to catch up with him and put him to use finding a book.
The chairman of the NANC board, Randy Patton, has a case study video shown in track one where he demonstrates a couple of counseling sessions with a couple having trouble with their marriage. The key points to take away from track one weren't so much formal steps to take you closer to being a counselor, but an understanding of the goals and driving factors in Biblical counseling, being, among other things, giving counselees hope through God's word and a heart transformed. This came through clearly in Randy's session with the troubled couple. I came into the session late and didn't hear the clip get setup, so I thought it was a real counseling session where the (now happy) couple had given permission for it to be used. I found later that the husband and wife pair were actually on staff with the church, and were simply portraying a couple who really had been in for counseling. I still laughed at the embarrassing or awkward moments before knowing it was fake.
As you saw from the previous post, the group from Bethany (BBC and BCC) went out to dinner together at a Chinese buffet. This was Austin's idea of a well rounded meal. Pudding, a pastry and one piece of asparagus. Daddy went back with the healthy child later for a redo.

We've got pictures of everyone in the previous post, but I noticed at the time that Kent was cut off on the right side. This aughta make up for it. I don't get to talk to Kent much, and have never really talked to Janell, his wife. The trip was a bit of an opportunity to catch up and be reminded why Kent is on staff (he's really cool, that's why).

Thursday evening rap up session was given by Paul Trip, a well known speaker and brother to the dude who runs the "Shepherding a Child's Heart" conferences, Tedd Tripp.

Mike got me all excited about dashing to the front of the auditorium Friday after Pastor Viars last session so that we could each get a picture with the man. Poor guy thought we were going to pummel him with questions. Well, what Mike really wanted was a pic for me for the blog. Thanks man!

Steve and Carol are a couple new to me who attend our sister church in Washington. It was awesome getting to know them, and posting the picture they asked me to take of them :-). One of these days I'll get around to emailing it to them.

Took forever to get that picture of the Faith sign on the previous post. Everyone (except us) was getting a group picture before heading off.

We owe alot of thanks to Joey for being our dedicated bus driver the entire week as the only guy with a license appropriate for the vehicle. It also made going out to dinner pretty fun with only four people touring the town in a 26 passenger bus.

Roxanne wanted to be sure about Josh so she EEed him on the way home.