Our Mission Conference

Well, I don’t even know where to begin.  As usual, I’m behind on the blog.  Once we returned from the States I haven’t done anything but eat, sleep, and breathe the conference that was at the end of January.  I was asked to be the childcare coordinator for the 0-4 year olds for our mission conference that is held every 3 years.  I was busy in the fall with this, but was consumed with it in the weeks leading up to it.  Gary and I have always gone to bed together, so when my average time of going to bed for 3 straight weeks was 2:00 am, that meant it was his average bed-time too.  He had stuff to do and work on, but I know he would have preferred to go to bed sooner (as I would have).

We had a house guest the week before the conference who was one of the key people involved in the planning of it, so each night after Ethan went to bed, all 3 of us were busy working on conference stuff. My home church sent a team of 5 over to help with the childcare.  I recruited 16 others from Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary, including some teachers and students from ICSB.  The work alone of recruiting, dealing with transportation issues for many, and even getting involved in medical insurance for the Eastern Europeans since they were having to travel to a different country was much more than I imagined. I ended up being on my feet running around during most of the conference.  I attended two of the main sessions.  Gary was recognized for serving with CCC for 25 years (in the picture above), so I was glad to attend that session.

I had a great time getting to see the team from my home church and spend time with them, though I didn’t realize that so much of my time with them would be talking about childcare issue concerning the conference.  The team were such troopers!  They arrived without their luggage and ended up wearing the same clothes for about 4 days.  The supplies and snacks for the kids were in the suitcases, so they had to adjust and be quite flexible at the beginning.  This was the first time that three of the five had left the country, so they had quite a beginning to their week.  So they arrived, jet-lagged and no luggage, and then jumped in working with lots of children from 12 different countries (and many not speaking English).  Many of these children had never been left with anyone outside of family before this conference, so you can imagine how much crying there was the first night and next day as parents dropped off their children.  We had 15 babies that were 2-6 months old.I never stepped foot outside of the hotel all week except to take this picture of Gary and Ethan from our balcony.  Gary and I had planned to go to the neighboring town during an afternoon that was free time, but it was the end of the week and my legs and feet were enormous from swelling due to being on my feet all week, and I couldn’t have walked the mile to get there and back due to my feet hurting me so badly. This is a picture of Ethan during lunch on our last day.  This is probably how many felt, especially the kids who had such long days.  Ethan was having to get up earlier than normal and was going to bed later than his bedtime due to the conference schedule.  Gary and I were so thankful that he is a pretty flexible child and that he is so social.  That saved us from lots of meltdowns during the week.  I couldn’t have imagined having the responsibilities that I had at this conference had Ethan been having meltdowns and not enjoyed being around so many people.

I’m quite eager to see the personality that God gives our little girl.  I know that she will be very different from Ethan, but I do hope she is easy-going like Gary and Ethan.  She will probably be introverted since Ethan is so extroverted, but it will make life easier if she has some extrovertedness.  But God knows best what our family needs, so we will see.