What a Missions Conference Looks like

So, this week at Eastport Bible Church, we are enjoying our annual Missions Conference.  And in case you’re wondering what a Missions Conference looks like, I’d thought I’d share a little bit of what ours has looked like for the past few days.

On Wednesday, at Hangtime, we celebrated the Missions Conference with a fun Cambodian theme.  The Cooking Workshop worked hard to make authentic Cambodian rice.

Everything looked and smelled delicious and the kids had a wonderful time.

Outdoors, one of the Games Workshops played Thunderball.  Which has nothing to do with Cambodia.  However, we did have the privilege of having missionary Julia Liles, play and since she is going to Cambodia, I figured it was worth mentioning.

And just inside, the kids at our Crafts workshop were working hard on two different Cambodian themed crafts.

It was a fantastic afternoon.

During our lesson time, Julia shared about being a missionary to Cambodia and did a beautiful job sharing with our kids all about how important it is to share Jesus and his love with people all over the world.

And as Hangtime Director, I stood back and was beaming with pride.  Because the kids all did such a wonderful job of listening and learning and I was thrilled with how well they behaved.  It might not seem like such a big deal, but each week, we have about 45 kids that come, from Kindergarten through Sixth Grade, so seeing them all sit quietly and be involved is pretty awesome, if you ask me.

Then, on Wednesday evening, our Boys Stockade program hosted their annual Shape and Race Derby.

  

And while it didn’t necessarily have a direct tie in with our Missions Conference, it kind of did.  Because you don’t have to go overseas to be a missionary and to tell others about Jesus.  You can really do it wherever you are, and for the past school year, we’ve had some amazing men from our church serving as missionaries to this awesome group of 3rd-6th Grade boys.

Our son being one of them.

By the way, his car was Lion themed this year.  Because when he chose to have jagged teeth cut in the front, it was kind of what we came up with.  What it lacked for in speed, it made up with in ferocity.

The boys and their families all had a wonderful time at the race.

As always, we were so thankful for Jason Hoda coming to help us get everything going with with race track and all of its technicalities.

Afterwards, this awesome guy shared some good encouragement about Jesus… and tied it in with racing of course.  He shared how important it was to run with endurance and perseverance and to fix our eyes on Jesus.  Great words of advice for pretty much any day, I think, and especially for those days that we feel like giving up.

Yesterday evening, we enjoyed a all church Barbecue, with delicious food cooked up by our finest.

It was a wonderful evening to gather together.

It was also a great evening to stare at sweet babies.  Which Steven demonstrated so nicely for this picture.

We had a great crowd of our wonderful church family, including our friend Justin, who was able to make it after finishing up his baseball game.

After the meal, we headed inside to hang out and worship together.  We also got to celebrate Bastian’s birthday.

Ellee was delighted to take a few swings at Bastian’s birthday piñata.  In case you couldn’t tell.

And Brendan was happy to make sure that the piñata head did not go to waste, by fashioning it into a new hat for himself.  Did I mention that not only are our youth group students the coolest, they are also quite resourceful.

After the piñata fun, we stood to worship and sing some songs together.

And then we had the privilege of hearing Alex Gulart share some great encouragement from the Bible.  He and his family are missionaries to Paraguay and we were so happy to have them join us for our conference.

And that is just a little bit of what our Missions Conference has looked like for the past few days.  And it’s not over yet.

On Saturday, we are hosting our second annual “Do Something” event.  We are meeting at 9:30am at Eastport Bible Church for breakfast and then from 10:30am-12:30am there will be a variety of different opportunities to serve in and around our community.  It’s going to be awesome.

Then, on Sunday, as we wrap up our Missions Conference, we have a special service at 9:30am as well as classes at 11:00am where our missionaries will be sharing more about what they are doing all over the world.  Then, at 5:30pm, we have an All Church Potluck Dinner ending with a closing service at 7:00pm where we will be presenting our 2015 Costa Rica Missions Team.  I haven’t mentioned it yet, but we are going back to Costa Rica again this year for another missions trip and I am so excited.  We have a team of twenty (including Christian and Ellee who will be joining us this year).

So yes.  There are more fun things in store for this coming weekend and our Missions Conference.  And if you are local, please come and join us!  There is fun for the whole family and it’s such an encouraging time to get together and to see the great things that God is doing all over the world.