This is the third year I attended the Women of Faith conference. Last year, I mostly wrote about my excitement of how awesome it was. This year I went in with a high expectation, and I was not disappointed. As expected, I was inspired and rejuvenated, which I really needed. I experienced all sorts of emotions during the conference. I laughed so hard that made me cough, and I cried and wiped the tears flowing down my chin and down my neck. I heard so many messages and felt that God was speaking directly to me, and I wanted to remember them all but couldn’t take notes fast enough. I almost wish I had some time afterwards, maybe even days, to process some of those things. Some of those things, I need to keep figuring out, so the purpose of this post is not to explain some of those ideas. I don’t think I could do justice trying to explain right now anyway. I did want to highlight some of the cool parts, which is much easier to explain.
On day 1, we had a couple hours of down time between the sessions, so some of us went to the Centennial Park. We had a lot of extra lunches we didn’t eat, so we gave away the food to some homeless guys. We then went to the fountain area and took some pics of ourselves being silly and debriefed about what we got out of the messages. We also had some deep conversations during our drive to and fro, which I appreciated. Then we headed back for the evening session and heard some more great messages and it was time for the concert.
Well, music is always a part I enjoy very much at these sort of events. The musical guest were Steven Curtis Chapman and Mandisa. SCC’s story is beautiful, too, but I want to talk about Mandisa because I didn’t know the story behind the voice. Wow! She really blew me away! I liked her songs but wasn’t a huge fan until I got to know her story. Her testimony was so powerful. She talked about how she had been a victim of rape and began to use food to cover her pain. But, God rescued her from that which kept her captive and enabled her to use her experience to speak into other people’s lives. It was evident that she has a joyful spirit and is living a victorious life! I love that. AND most importantly, I saw her leaving the lobby area surrounded by bodyguards and I said hi to her and she said hi back! 
When I process some of those things that I think God is trying to speak into my life, I will try to write about it. For now, here are some pictures from the weekend.
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