Basically a singles conference is where the young adults (about ages 18–27 or so) from a lot of different churches get together for food, fun, and preaching.
Friday night we started with dinner, and then played a great ice-breaker game in which everyone sits in a huge circle and there are one-too-few chairs. (Keep in mind that there are about 100 people involved.) The person in the middle picks someone and says, "Do you love your neighbors?" That person answers, "Yes, I love my neighbors (name) and (name), but I REALLY love people who (some random description, like people who wear pearls, or people who were born in May, or people who wear boots)." Then all those people who fit the random description have to jump up and swap chairs, while the guy in the middle tries to steal one. One person is always left without a chair, and he becomes the guy in the middle. That was exhausting game number one.
Then we had preaching, which was awesome, as we expected. Our speaker for the weekend was Rand Hummel, camp director of The Wilds of New England. If you ever have the chance to hear him speak or go to The Wilds for camp, don't miss it! There's also a Wilds of North Carolina.
All five of my kids have heard Rand preach many times, and he actually remembered us even though he's been preaching to multiple thousands of teens for 25+ years.
Then we sat in ridiculous traffic on I-95 at 10 pm. By the time we got home with two extra people, ate pizza, and fellowshipped, it was midnight. Up Saturday at 6:30, leave the church by 8:30, and we started Day 2 of the conference with muffins, pastries, and coffee. While I was getting coffee, a young lady stopped me and asked if I was Mrs. Sargent. I answered, "Yes. How do you know me?" She told me she was the daughter of a pastor we had years ago. I remember this girl being maybe 11 or 12 years old. She and her sister Jessica (who is married to Caleb Piercey, by the way) had many tea parties with my daughters. Jennifer is now a college graduate and a teacher.
Also during this caffeinating time, Melinda was acting silly.
I just had to throw that out there.
Then preaching time number two and then lunch, because if Baptists do nothing else, they know how to eat. Then back to the chapel, and here's where it gets interesting.
The next item on the agenda was a game. We were split up into groups of 10. Each group was given a bag of six props with these instructions: Make up a three-minute skit using all ten people and all six props. You have 15 minutes to be ready to present it to the group. Our props were a ping-pong ball, a roll of masking tape, a plastic cup-holder for a car, a hand-held barometer, a glue stick, and a compass like the one you used in geometry.
The gist of our skit was that we were filming a movie. One guy was the director. Eight of us were actors on an airplane that crashes on an island. Ben was a crocodile that had the key to our survival: the barometer (we had to know whether it was going to rain). We had to kill him to save ourselves. I won't go into details, but there was a lot of very poor acting during which I threw myself on the croc so Kelce could tape his man-eating jaws shut. He was finally subdued with the switchblade-compass.
We won first place. Fortunately, I have no photos.
Preaching time number three was followed by a few games of volleyball and another block party on I-95 to get home. By the time we dropped everyone where they needed to be, it was after 6 pm and neither Ben nor I wanted to cook, so we waited 35 minutes for an extremely mediocre steak, and then came home to put on stretchy pants.
And here we are. My bed is calling.
Be thankful ~
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