Engage 2012 part 1

Engage 2012 started with a hiccup…I forgot to order the official Engage 2012 t-shirts in time to hand out while at Engage…oops!!

But that didn’t stop the excitement!

The days leading up to Engage 2012 were exciting, for both the students and adult leaders.

Conversations about expectations, friendships that would be strengthen and made, and an opportunity to relax and get refreshed were common.

Although I was still a bit unsettled.

Engage was going to have a different feel this year. If you remember blogs about last year’s Engage, we stayed in cabins. This year we were staying across the lake on the group property, which had dormitories, a chapel, a mess hall, and more room.

With that brought excitement for me, but if you know me well enough, you know I don’t like to walk into “unknowns”. And the group property had a bunch of “unknowns”.

So as we arrived of course my “OCD” kicked in and I had to check out the chapel to make sure it was big enough and had what we needed to pull off the gatherings. Upon entering the chapel…I was greatly surprised. It reminded me of the old Pentecostal church my family was “saved” in back in 1986. Wooden pews, pipe organ, small stage, and that old wooden church smell…I was loving it.

Then we checked out the dormitories…again greatly surprised, the rooms were huge!

So despite the hiccup of not ordering the shirts, Engage 2012 was off to a positive start. We offloaded the trailer and picked our beds, just in time to eat dinner in the mess hall…again greatly surprised at the size of the mess hall. As we walked up to the mess hall, you could smell the burgers cooking.

That night we enjoyed burgers…then the presence of God afterwards.

When we started worship and the students were singing so loudly, the worship leader Paul Haley could barely hear himself singing through the microphone!!

It was awesome!!!

After worship we took a look at Abraham and his calling to leave his household and his comfort zone and go to a land God would show him.

We ended the night with a bunch of people who didn’t really know each other 24 hours prior to Engage, talking and sharing what they have been going through…aka…community…or what I like to call becoming family!

The 1^st day was in the books, and I was already exhausted…

But God gave me the strength and energy to push forward…

More on that later!