NYWC: Day 1

I just got back from the first night at the National Youth Worker’s Convention in Sacramento, CA. I’ll tell you about it in just a second, but first let me tell you about the trip here so far…

We -– Deanna, Mikella, Amy, and I -- left on Wednesday morning from Rapid City. Our goal was to leave sometime between 10:00 am that morning and noon. Well, go figure, we left at noon. The milometer on our car as we drove out read “77,777.7” miles. We joked to each other that God was going to be with us even from the start of the trip. The day before we had to have some expensive repair work done on our car to prepare it for the trip. Something that we weren’t expecting when we took it in for an oil change on Monday.

Anyhow, we left town and drove to Fort Collins, CO to spend the night at the Hyatt. It was a gift from the church for last year’s Pastor Appreciation that we hadn’t used up yet. It was a wonderful evening in a wonderful room at a really nice hotel. The next morning, we got up and drove to the Denver International Airport to fly to Sacramento. It was Mikella’s first airplane ride and she did incredible. We had a short lay-over in Phoenix and a some-what unpleasant flight from Phoenix to Sacramento. There were two guys sitting in front of us who thought too much of themselves that were drinking, reading pornographic magazines, and making rude comments to the attendants and others.

We got to our hotel with no problems, meeting up with a neat couple from South Africa who were with a dance / drama company called the “Thirteenth Floor”. They happened to be exhibitors at this year’s convention. We stopped by once we got to the hotel and convention center to say “hi” and pick up their promotional materials.

We settled into our room and walked over to the capital building to see if we could spot "The Governator". We were told later in the week that he lives on the 15th floor of the hotel that we were staying at.

After our stroll through the capital, we headed over to the Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner. We were all really hungry because none us had eaten since breakfast -- and Amy actually hadn’t had a real meal since lunch the day before (long story). After that, the girls went back to our room and I went to the late night option at the Sheridan Hotel featuring live worship from WorshipTogether.com. The featured artists were Johnny Parks, Brenton Brown, and Vicky Beeching.

It was an incredible evening and the best way I have ever had the pleasure of starting my time at the NYWC. I hope they do it again next year. It was like two hours of general session worship with Tomlin and Crowder, only a little more intimate and personal. I was in tears through most of the time as God ministered to me in places only He could know that needed it. In fact, I found myself getting filled up spiritually in places that I didn’t even know were dry or stagnant… and this is only the first night. I can’t wait for tomorrow! I’ve gotta sign off… it’s midnight.