I'm out of witty headlines

Day five … or is it six? Technically it’s seven for me … they all sort of blend together.

Today we got to sleep in!!! The first thing on our agenda for toady was lunch at noon … which was wonderful considering people were in our room until 3:30am. AGH!! I was so tired that I just rolled over and went to sleep around 2:45am, knowing they would leave eventually. It was fun though!

After lunch we wandered around in the Exhibition hall for a little while, and then headed back to our hotel for mission presentations and a mini YAD worship.

Now (3:45pm) we are sitting in plenary listening to and voting on the reports from different committees and their overtures. We are scheduled to be here until 6pm. YAY! But we are planning on dressing up and going to P.F. Chang’s for dinner, so that’s exciting.

OK … made it to dinner and it was amazing! We got a myriad of different entrées and just passed our plates! Delicious! On the way back, however, we J-walked back to the convention center, and were confronted by picketers who shouted at us “Break man’s law, get a ticket. Break God’s law, go to hell.” They were there to show their disapproval of homosexual rights in our church. Not more than 50 feet away, however, a group of people who were promoting the rights of homosexuals were handing out cookies. It’s disappointing to see how separated people are on such issues and the lengths to which they will go to get their views across. These Christians are brothers and sisters in Christ but seem to be so blind to that fact that they are feuding so harshly and have resorted to these (for lack of a better word) animal like behaviors. We’ve been told that it will only get worse from this point forward so I guess the fun has only just begun :-/

We have just finished “speak out” (an opportunity for people to get things off of their chests or offer suggestions) and have now (8:05pm) returned to the business from before dinner. We have been debating the majority of this time about whether or not our God and the Gods of Jews and Muslims are in fact the same God. Now I’m not sure if any of you can answer this question, but I know that I sure can’t and I’m not really sure how anyone can truly know about another’s God. I don’t believe that the God you worship is the same as the one I worship, because I believe God is what you believe him/her to be, and we all see this God figure in a different way because not a one of us believes the same exact same thing in the same way as any other. And that is not to say that we don’t share in this religion, because we all worship this higher power as one and come together in this faith as people who believe in God regardless of how we see him/her individually. A representative just stood up and actually said almost the same thing that I just typed so I guess I’m not the only one who thinks this way.

We are actually ahead in our docket so they have moved a few committee reports up to tonight instead of leaving them for tomorrow. We are now (8:30pm) on a short break as we wait for the amendment to be put on the screen. I believe that the running feed of our meeting can be found on the PC(USA) website (if anything can be found on that site) for all of those interested in exactly what is happening. It is in real time (pacific coast time) however, so we are three hours behind.

The natives are getting restless … it was just suggested that we move a little slower (because pc-biz doesn’t move as quickly as our moderator and by the time the overture pops up on the screen, we’ve already voted on it) and there was a huge uproar of disapproval. They don’t make that much noise when we vote.

Alright … now (9:05pm) we are watching a video about our stated clerk … but it’s not so much a video as a medley of pictures put to music. Not gonna lie … it’s a bit awkward, and I don’t necessarily see it’s relevance to the committee that brought it into question.

YAD caucus is officially over and we are now (12:30am) sitting in Nate’s room watching Scrubs. We got Ben&Jerry’s ice cream in the lobby and we are not just chillin’.

Tomorrow starts bright and early with plenary ALL day long.

I want to add a special thanks to my parents and all of parents who allow their children to be who they are and accept them no matter what. We heard a lot of testimony today about people whose parents disowned them because of choices that they have made, and people whose parents didn’t take the time to inform them of the natural happenings of life. It just makes me appreciate so greatly how wonderful my parents are. So thanks to them and to all … it’s great to know how much I am loved. Love you too mom and dad … and to all others who are like parents/mentors to me!