Columbus 09

For six days at the beginning of July I traveled with 12 kids from our youth group and 3 other sponsors to Columbus, Ohio for the Mennonite Church USA Conference. This is my third time going and every time I love it! I will say it is terribly hard to be away from my family for that amount of time, especially the kids, but I am so rejuvenated by Christ at the end of the week that it is always so worth it! The days are long, but its amazing how you just keep going...like the Energizer Bunny.

A lot of our time was spent at worships in the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, so the first night we all took a picture at the Nationwide sign. As you can tell, we had a goofy group, but I loved every one of them. Its always so much fun to get to know the youth better, and two of them were my cousins, Kara and Sondra, so I got to spend a lot of time with them, which rarely happens these days. A couple of times during the day we would meet as our own little youth group to discuss what we had heard at worship and our plans for the rest of the day. This is picture is from that time. That is another sponsor, Bennett Friesen. Always a great friend!

We had the opportunity to celebrate the 4th of July in Columbus watching an awesome fireworks show. I think they said it was 27 minutes long and there were 1250 fireworks. Probably one of the best I've ever seen.

After many hours of travel and little sleep, we arrived back in Omaha before driving another 2 hours home. This was our last group photo. What a GREAT group of kids and sponsors. Thank you everyone for such a wonderful time, and I hope the Holy Spirit was renewed in you as it was in me.