The Strong in the Lord conference last weekend
View from the parking lot of the church
There’s nothing better to prepare you for an Alaska Bright Lights conference than reindeer sausage for breakfast, right?! (Thanks again, Mr. Vassar! 🙂 )
Just as attendees were beginning to arrive the easel fell over. Here Sarah is discovering that one of the lights broke. Thankfully Simon (son of one of the host families) got it all fixed in time.
Bryant simultaneously fixing a broken harp string …
Stephen meeting with the sound man from the church before the conference started
We had barely any problems with sound at this conference since Stephen was there. He has always had a way of fixing things that go wrong, so his presence at a conference removes a lot of stress from the rest of us.
Not to mention he even brought us Starbucks mochas to split up … a very appreciated surprise!
And he gets us all laughing … (this picture was taken at the Vassar’s house after the conference).
But back to the conference. Here’s Sarah, a girl in the Alaska Bright Lights group, arriving at the conference Saturday morning. (The sun doesn’t rise until about 10am so this was the first time we’ve had people arrive at a BL conference Sat. morning in the dark!)
Morning devotions in the small groups … (which includes balloon popping).
Kelly Jo, an attendee from a couple hours away, really bonded with Abby, her small group leader. It was a difficult goodbye!
Although there were new challenges and new obstacles in Alaska, we are going to look back on our time time there as a time we really saw the Lord work. For example, here is something a very honest father wrote on his response form:
“[The conference] reinforced that my responsibility as a father is so huge, and I am failing so bad, a lot of head knowledge not as much heart, time is running out … Please pray that I would make the decision to truly serve the Lord with my whole life, I’ve been serving two masters and my family is suffering because of it, that’s not my intent but that’s what’s happening.”
We also had some special opportunities outside the conferences. Our team went over to the home of Vangie (a girl in Alaska who joined our team for the week) to sing for her father, who has been in a wheelchair/bed for many years. Though our team went over hoping to be a blessing to him, but it turned out that Mr. and Mrs. Alexander were such a blessing to our team! They shared many stories about how the Lord has been their rock through the difficult times they have gone through. There were quite a few tears that afternoon!
It was so sweet to see how excited Bethany, Bekah’s little sister, was as they picked Bekah up at the airport.
We are flying out tomorrow morning for Singapore. Bekah and Danielle both were not feeling well over the 2 days we were home … we’d appreciate prayer for health / rest on the plane and also for opportunities to be a light.
After a beautiful drive through the Malaysian countryside, we arrived in Melaka a few days ago.
Took this picture after dinner at a little outdoor Indian restaurant near our hotel. 
Most of the last two days have been spent doing “teacher’s training” with the Asian girls who are helping us to lead the conference. Here Jolynn (in red) is sharing with the group. She and Carolyn (from Singapore) have done so much work in organizing this conference, and it’s been fantastic to see so many other Asian girls involved as well and rising to leadership. They’re all doing a terrific job!!
The conference started this morning! We have a great group of girls and it has been such a good day. The conference will run three days (ending Saturday).
We keep talking among ourselves (Americans) about how sweet the girls are here! It is so fun to work with them. The girls are mainly from Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and there are some from China.
