Our first conference

 Ramont and I both grew up going to church conferences (almost) each summer - he to North Central Mennonite Conference and I to Northern District. Each summer we looked forward to this, the meeting of friends from Freeman, SD and Henderson, NE (for me), the swimming and horrendous sun burns, staying in peoples' homes (and thinking beforehand that maybe, just maybe this year's family would have a swimming pool in their backyard), etc.

So naturally we're both eager to begin that tradition with our family as well. This year was the first time we got to go to the Central Plains Conference (merger 14ish years ago of the formerly Northern District and Iowa-Nebraska conference for you fellow conference nerds).

We really talked it up at home, and so Jonathan and Anna were really eager to go as well. Here they are, fresh as the morning, on the first full day.

It was held at a college in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.We enjoyed being on a small campus in the middle of summer (it even smelled like Bethel!). Here Ramont checks out the displays from various church orgs and schools. This building also housed the delegate sessions, children's activities, and meals.

Here you see how the tables were set up for the delegate sessions.

Nothing controversial on the business agenda this year. We heard from the various committees, welcomed a new Spanish-speaking church from Iowa, were introduced to a new biblical discernment resource (it looks quite amazing) put together by conference members over the last year, discussed potential new mission partnerships and offered responses to the conference's new strategic plan. A photo summary of the whole weekend, set to music, can be found here. You can also find more photos here (again, if you're that rare breed of conference nerd).

We also really appreciated the main speaker, Jewel Gingerich Longenecker (of AMBS) and her presentations on congregations and their leaders who study the Bible and do it well. We were definitely inspired!

Most (if not all!) of the Iglesia El Balsamo showed up to be introduced to and welcomed by the conference.

 Our kids quite enjoyed the all-day children's activities (as did we, ha ha): lots of crafts, games, outdoor play, and who knows what else. Here is Anna with one of her creations.

It was announced that there were more children at this conference than ever before. That sure seems like an encouraging statistic!

Here Jonathan has a ball with his new friend, Fritz. His other favorite person was Gosh, whose (almost) name he yelped in the crowd one evening. A little bit of sleuthing on our part determined that his name was actually Josh.

Ramont and I made some new friends as well, especially folks our age(ish). Seems like a LOT of the pastors in this conference are quite young, which is kind of nice for us :)

We enjoyed abundant and tasty cafeteria food each day. And we ESPECIALLY enjoyed soft serve ice cream at every single meal.

Perhaps the one downside was not getting enough sleep during the night or at nap time. Here Anna struggles with the post-lunch sleepies. They just kept going and going, but it was clear that they were slipping further and further behind on restedness (and so slept quite nicely once home).

We spent many an hour enjoying the hot, sultry weather outside on the campus' beautiful grounds.

One of our favorite events was a variety show the last evening, put on by a variety of folks from the host churches. It was held (as were the worship services) in the chapel of this building.

Part good music and part funny, it was well worth staying up for.

And then back to our host family for night.

You might be able to sense that we're kind of hooked on conference, and will probably want to go once or twice more in the future.