Building Tomorrow's Church Conference, Arizona

Over Memorial Day weekend Paul and I took a group of college students to Arizona for the Building Tomorrow's Church Conference. It was the second year of the conference and we were greatly encouraged at the amount of college and young adults that came from all over the country. The conference was put on by our denomination (Reformed Baptist) to provide a time where we could meet other young Christians with a common theology, share what God is doing around the country in His church, and have a time of teaching on the importance of the local church and what that looks like and how that is practically applied in real life. We also had a lot of fun. We stayed at a camp in Prescott Arizona which had amazing food and facilities. We played volleyball and kickball and relaxed in the hot tub at night under the clear skies covered in stars.

Our group went a day early so we could go visit the Grand Canyon. It rained hard while we were driving to the canyon and we were all nervous that we would not be able to see anything when we got there. I decided to pray that if it was God's will, he could stop the rain, even for a little bit so we could all see his awesome creation. And he answered! As soon as we pulled in to the parking lot the rain stopped. We were still in a thick cloud and couldn't see anything. We sat down for a picnic lunch and slowly the clouds drifted away. It was almost like God was slowly unveiling the canyon. It was very dramatic as the clouds continued to disappear and you could see more and more and more until all of the canyon was in sight. When you see things like the Grand Canyon you realize how small you are and it's humbling...in a good way! God is so much bigger than us and his creativity is awesome.

We also had fun with the wildlife. They were not at all afraid of humans so we had fun feeding them Rice Crispy Treats. We saw a sign prohibiting this later, but we had fun in our ignorance. They were so cute!