Conference time!

On Monday, May 10, I got a chance to walk Amy to school for one last "goodbye." It was such a bittersweet time … knowing it would be more than a week before I see the family again, but at the same time knowing I'll be reconnecting with CEF® family members.

We arrived nearly four hours later at Schwäbisch Gmünd, and started our time stuffing our faces at a Chinese Buffet! Not the Jade in Harrisburg, but close. I remember smiling as I watched one

person in our party eat only fries and sweet and sour chicken. Oh, the tastes he missed! After overeating, we made our way to the conference center, Schönblick. This place is much larger

than the conference center in Rehe, where we've had the last several conferences. The main auditorium seated more than 1,000 people and had a fully stocked sound, lighting and video camera system. Needless to say it was much more advanced than anything I've ever tackled! After an hour-long training session with Uli, the main technician in Schönblick, I was off and running, operating the faders like a pro!

The conference staff got started getting everything ready: name tags, conference and prayer guides (in English, German and Russian) water bottles, contest inserts, toys for the children, mugs and pens, all going inside a special cloth bag. We had rooms to set up and equipment to load, and had a video chat with Jen and the children to let them know we arrived safely. Homesickness set in.

What kept me from blogging during the entire conference? 16-20 hour work days. My typical day at the conference was:

• 7:30 prayer time and staff meeting.
• Getting song slides ready for the two morning sessions and evening session. (this included fixing most of the songs as we realized we created the song slides to be used on a smaller projection screen.
• Putting slides together for several of the speakers.
• Ran the lights and multimedia presentations for the main sessions. (Keynote was the software I used, and it ran great!)
• Make announcement slides for the information desk.
• Taking photos (which didn't happen much – major kudos to Andrea Weir and Markus Malzner, who stepped up to the plate in my stead).
• Create door signs, print them out and put them at the correct places.
• Accepted photos for a photography contest and categorized all of them. Tim Shirey and I also selected the winners for the contest, which was pretty hard to do!
• Guided folks to the correct seminar room and helped set up A/V equipment.
• Practice for my seminar on "Better Presentations" which I gave on Saturday morning. (I also held another seminar on the Adobe Creative Suite and how I did a few of the more difficult things in my layouts of materials.)
• Had many short meetings with conference attendees to discuss anything from layout difficulties to training sessions to camera types.
• and lots of tiny details which I did, but forgot about. Whew. My head hurts just looking back at the list!

So how can I sum up the conference? It was the absolute busiest conference I've worked at so far, but it was by far the best. There's nothing like getting between 350-450 people together who have one goal – evangelizing children with the unchanging gospel of Jesus Christ. I'll use a few other blogs to share more specifics, but I am so thankful and grateful to have taken part in such a huge undertaking. Thank you for praying for us all during this busy time. I can't thank you enough for bringing myself and the whole family before the throne of Almighty God.

Photos courtesy of Markus Malzner and Andrea Weir.