Milwaukee!

Happy late summer (except it may not feel like that for those of you in Orlando!). I am so excited to tell you about our U.S. National Ministry Conference! It went SO WELL in SO MANY WAYS! Thank you for your prayers. This is the second time we have held this conference in Wisconsin. As you may remember, Andy and I serve on the operations team for this gathering. Andy has spent the last six+ months working with data, databases, nametags, information sheets to be given out at check-in, reports, and more. I have been helping our staff over the last six+ months by answering a small mountain of emails about the conference. It all came together in July!

We arrived in Milwaukee on July 5 and unpacking started on July 7. The guys (Andy and a team of eight guys) unloaded 11 SEMIS IN TWO HOURS with No Injuries! After two days of set up, we were able to serve about 700 of our “staff over 60” attending the Legacy staff gathering.

One thing God did this summer was give us great relationships with the people working in Milwaukee. The hotel staff. The security staff in The Baird Center (one part of the Milwaukee convention center). The wait staff in local restaurants. One restaurant waiter commented, “I haven’t been asked, ‘how are you doing’ and ‘is there anything I can be praying for you?’ this many times. . . Not even my kids check on me like you all have.” This is a picture of Latonda, my glasses twin, one of the security team from the conference center. She called me Sunflower, for obvious reasons—our yellow conference shirts certainly stood out!!

July 12 was check-in day for about 4000 of our coworkers and their children. This was the HUGE test of Andy’s work! People got their nametags and wrist bands and lanyards along with information about the first days of the conference. No waiting in lines!

The first two days of meetings were based on your ministry focus: campus, military, internationals, athletes, and more. On July 14, we all gathered in the Panther Arena (another part of the Milwaukee convention center). There is nothing like worshipping God with 4000+ of your friends! We heard from ministry leaders, the head of our U.S. Ministries, Mark Gauthier, and our new ministry president, David Robbins, alongside his wife, Meg.

My work team (communications for the Campus Ministry) got together for dinner — it was the first time we all met Meredith face-to-face; and, we were introduced to Bonnie, from Wisconsin, who is joining our team. German food is very popular in Milwaukee. We sampled sausages, beer cheeses and yummy soups. And fried cheese curds! We shared stories and ate giant pretzels, the size of a steering wheel, with beer cheese and mustard. I liked the cheese so much, I‘ve now made it at home.

Another group that Andy and I got to hang out with were these long-term, “God is so faithful” friends. Andy, Chris, and Mike, the three men to the right, lived together, as singles, in San Bernardino, California, when we all started working for Cru. Eileen, Noreen and I, the three women to the left, all went to UConn together!!

All together, these five couples have 202+ years of ministry work under their belts. Amazing! Randy and Eileen serve at Lake Hart (Cru’s HQ). Tim and Noreen work at Biola University in California. Chris and Carolyn also serve at Lake Hart. Mike and Gay work with international students in Texas. Noreen, Andy, Chris, Mike and I joined the staff of Cru in 1984.

Andy’s months of prep came down to three things, [1] getting our staff registered for the conference ahead of time and [2] getting our staff checked in July 12. Andy’s goal was to check in 4000 adults and 1000 kids with no one waiting in line. And less “snazzy”, [3] Andy has the job of creating reports, lists, counts, totals, projections, etc. Ministry leaders needed to know who from their ministry would and would not be in attendance. Childcare needed to know how many lunches to prepare. The high school program needed to know how many busses to order for field trips. And our finance people needed to know who would be billed how much for what. The goal of the operations team is that these mundane, yet necessary needs, should never detract from the overall experience of the national conference. We want to be out of the way so people can meet with the Lord. We resoundingly met that goal!! According to many early reports, the content of the conference overall was a big success.

Your prayers buoyed us up during the two weeks in Wisconsin! Andy and I are well aware that we are no longer 33 (how old we were when we started on the national conference ops team) and we are grateful to the Lord that we can keep up with our work and these extra responsibilities. Thank you for helping to make this time possible! 

Lastly, a couple more pictures from Milwaukee: