It's early morning and I'm sitting in our hotel room in Sopron writing as Beth and Molly continue to sleep. We were all really exhausted last night.
Conference is an interesting mix of really hard work and wonderful blessings. But that's the way ministry is. My experience over the past 16 years has shown me that. God desires to bless us in many ways, but he doesn't want us to grow lazy or complacent. In Luke 9 Jesus compares the ministry to a farmer in the field guiding a plow. Now that's hard work! But work that pays off in the end.
We have really enjoyed getting to know other missionaries -- to hear their stories; their triumphs, their foibles, their joys, their frustrations. Leading worship for this group is so easy. You see, through the year, most of these people never have a chance to engage in corporate worship in their own heart language of English. This is the one week that they can do this and they are hungry for it. All we have to do is get it started and it takes off from there. In fact there was a point in last night's worship set where I was going to end a song and they kept going! It was great!
Molly is doing such a wonderful job running sound. She is very serious about it and works very hard to make sure that everything runs seemlessly -- which isn't easy when you have wireless microphones that decide to not do what they are supposed to and we have to (as descretely as possible) sneak up to the stage and trade out the wireless microphone with a wired one so that the person talking can continue.
One of the great blessings is our Service Team. This is a group of volunteers that are not GEM missionaries, but volunteers who devote a week every year serving GEM at conference, taking care of everything from childcare to room setup to serving cookies in the evenings.
Sopron is an interesting city. It's kind of difficult as an American to get my mind around the fact that there has been a city here since ancient times. In fact, you can see part of a Roman road and ruins of dwellings. Most of the buildings in the City Center date from the Baroque period when the city was destroyed by fire in 1676, but you can find older, Medieval buildings as well, sometimes built upon Roman foundations. In the US, if you find a structure built 200 years ago, you think that's old, but it's really nothing.
Today, Sopron is surrounded on three sides by Austria. In the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, four western Hungarian counties were awarded to Austria, but Sopron remained Hungarian. It is called "The Most Loyal City" to this day.
Well, I must get a shower and get ready for the day.
More later...
No comments:
Post a Comment