I arrived home shortly after 2 this afternoon. The trip home was MUCH quicker than the trip TO Grand Rapids. We decided to go East on I-94 and South on I-69 instead of just coming South on 131 and 13. This proved to be about 20-miles MORE of a trip but nearly an hour faster! Definitely the way we’ll travel come December.

This morning’s session was another encouraging time and a reminder that “the Word dwells with us”. We then joined in partaking of communion together.

When I came home, it was one of those moments that I realized again just how much I love my wifey. It’s good to be home again with my wifey! (Even if all she watches is the Food Network!)

After a long day of two general sessions, lunch at The Bull’s Head, many networking opportunities and a night of fireworks, I am glad that today is finally drawing to a close.

This morning, Doug Swink, our conference speaker gave us some encouraging words and this afternoon we heard from Scott Simmons – the new Youth guy in the Spiritual Formations Department. He gave us an amazing outlook of where the department is heading in the near future and we got somewhat of an inside-scoop as to what will be happening at LOGOS5.

I enjoyed dinner with the Indiana North district youth pastors and some of IWU’s finest.

I also enjoyed meeting this new life:

Raya Reiswig is the 1-month-old daughter of Marty and Jaclyn Reiswig – he is the youth pastor at Fall Creek Wesleyan in Indianapolis. She is a beautiful newborn and her proud parents were very happy to introduce her to me and Kory this afternoon!

I also had the opportunity of getting to know two more youngsters today:

Bryce and Jordann Luedtke are the children of Jeff and Amy – our District Youth President and good friend of mine. It was great to have a chance to get to know those two!

As always, there is a complete set of daily photos available by clicking here.

After dinner tonight a couple of us headed to a sort of “street party/fair” that was going on down here in Grand Rapids. We hung around and watched people for a bit and then headed back to the hotel. When it got dark, we joined a couple thousand local Grand Rapid-ites and headed outside for probably one of the most spectacular fireworks shows I’ve ever seen. It was fantastic. I will upload some video clips when I get a chance next week!

Tomorrow we have one more “General Session” before we pack up and head for our homes. I’m definitely heading home re-charged and renewed in my own spirit after this weekend.

Although it’s tough being away from my best friend for these three days, I am thankful that I serve on a denomination that supports it’s youth leaders with quality weekends like this! Oh, and I have about 15 t-shirts from our Wesleyan colleges to give away at our BOX kickoff in two weeks! I love the freebies!

Well it’s almost 11:30PM here in Grand Rapids, Michigan – but in my mind and body it’s only 10:30PM so I’m all about updating the site!

We arrived here in Michigan at about 4:30 this afternoon and after we got a bit lost we finally found our hotel, the Amway Grand Center – a pretty amazing place! It’s obvious that this hotel has been around for some time, and undergone many upgrades, but they’ve kept the classic architecture!

Of course there are a TON of pictures from the first day on my Flickr account.

After a great first session on “Worship”, I headed to T.G.I. Friday’s for some dinner with some of the guys in the district and my brother Kory.

In about an hour I will be on my way to Grand Rapids, Michigan. I have picked up my rental car – which I was told would most likely be a Neon-sized vehicle. To my surprise, however, I was given a Nissan Quest!

I’m heading to Columbia City first this afternoon for lunch and to pick up two of my buddies – Jason Tash and Rich VanVuren – two youth pastors on our district. It will be a MUCH more comfortable trip driving a van rather than a small car!

Last night we had a good turn out for theBOX – and we also debuted our two internet-surfing computers in the tikiBOX cafe-area. All of the extra 150 postcards were handed out and were promised to be passed out to friends at school. We’ll see what happens on the 21st at our Kick-Off.

I’m heading to Grand Rapids for our area Fall Leadership Gathering – where a couple hundred Wesleyan Youth Pastors will meet together over the next three days for a time of renewal and leadership training! I’m looking forward to it VERY much!

I’ll be staying in the same room with my buddy Kory Pence, who if you’ve read the comments, just had his father elected as our next General Superintendant of the Wesleyan Church! Dr. Jerry Pence is our new GS and for some reason, Kory keeps asking me if I’ll “still be his friend?”

It will be a great weekend.

My latest print-job arrived by mail yesterday afternoon. I took some of the postcards home last night and snapped photos, but our internet went down last night at home and I couldn’t upload them.

I snapped some more photos today in a badly-lit room, but here’s a shot of the postcards:

Over a hundred of these bad boys were mailed to my BOX mailing list this afternoon. I will give the other 150 out to teens tonight to pass out at school.

Speaking of tonight. I will now spend the rest of the afternoon working on getting computer #2 up and running for theBOX tonight!