Convinced: Winter Conference Highlights!

My first experience with Winter Conference was January 2005 when I was a freshman in college. Each January I arranged my schedule so that I would NOT miss WC. The conferences ended up being a highlight for me all 4 years of college. It's 4 days jam packed with speakers, workshops, outreach to DFW, worship, late night convos, no sleep & lots of junk food. :) Being on staff hasn't changed this, except that we work behind the scenes to put on the entire conference. I was lucky enough to have a job this year that required a little bit of before I showed up, 2 meetings at conference, running around when my event was happening (social media outreach). Other then that I was with students and at all the meetings!

Highlights:
This winter conference was one of the best I have ever been to. This marked the 6th WC & it was amazing. The last night was over the top with worship. We went an hour over our schedule because it was CLEAR that the Holy Spirit wanted us to remain. It was beautiful. If you ever want to be overwhelmed by worship (in a good way), step into a room with 800 ppl singing at the top of their lungs to our King. Beautiful.

This is a newer song that I absolutely love. We sang this multiple times! Hit play to listen to it while you read the rest of the blog. It's beautiful!

Jeffery & Teddy in conversations

Right before we got up and danced :)

 We spent one afternoon at Buffalo Wild Wings eating lunch and doing a faith experience. What is that you ask? Basically all staff/students learned a flash mob dance the night before. The next day we were dispersed all over Ft. Worth. We went to the restaurant and in the middle of eating lunch we did our dance. (The managers were in on this too. They turned off all the sound in the place & turned on our music) After we did our little jig the students went to talk with the customers using a Fan survey. It asked who they were rooting for (football), and discussed goals for the new year. Many of the conversations led into spiritual conversations and even 14 gospel presentations. It was so wonderful watching our students take steps of faith to engage in spiritual conversations with strangers. They really had a wonderful time too! I even got to speak to one of the BWW workers for a little bit. He was clearly confused by the gospel and what it meant for his life. I wish I had more time to talk, but his ride was waiting for him. I just left him with a few websites to check out (www.everystudent.com) & gave him a hardcopy of our evangelism tool (Knowing God Personally).

TechCRU at Broomball

Another highlight of WC each year is our annual competition in Broomball against OU. This little match up has occurred long before I started attending WC in 2005. We even have a golden broom that is passed back and forth each year, depending on who wins. We won this year!!! 1-0 :) Broomball is basically hockey but with regular shoes. You use these paddle things to hit a small ball around on the ice. Teddy and I weren't able to go this year due to staff jobs at the conference & exhaustion. (They played at 11pm this year)...but it's still one of the highlights each year! 

Photobooth fun!

Photobooths are such a trend right now, that I wasn't surprised to find one at our WC too. This picture is to represent the fun we had being with our Tech Cru students at the conference! We laughed, played games, prayed together, took steps of faith together, were challenged by scripture, just had a blast!




Our last day of conference was focused on the Nations. If you missed my blog post 2 days ago you need to check out the video.  We spent one morning praying for different countries. The card I had was Dominican Republic. As I prayed I couldn't help but cry over this country. It is neat hearing the prayers of hundreds praying for specific countries!

All of these dots (to the right) are places students have committed to either pray for, send $$, or go to! It was incredible seeing hundreds of students wait in line to place their dot while we worshiped.

SStats from WC:

- Student Attendees - 718

- $ raised from WSN Ask - $52,000 (We had one evening where staff/students were challenged to give to help students in Ethopia attend their Winter Conference. In ONE evening that much money was raised! $144 enables 2 students to attend. If you do the math, that allows 361 students to attend their Winter Conference for FREE! I love it!)

- $ raised by students before conference for Feeding Children Faith Experience - $19,000 (One outreach we did was Feeding the Children. In order to do this, students were raising $ all Fall on their campuses. We packed 75,000 meals in about an hour using assembly lines. All these meals are going to Ethopia to our team we have placed there already. They are taking them to the poorest people group in the country. It was neat to be apart of something like this!)

- Spiritual Conversations Initiated – 1766 (Through out different outreaches-FB outreach & Flash Mob outreach)

- Gospel Presentations –286

- Decisions for Christ – 12+ (PRAISE JESUS!!!)

- Meetings set-up for conversations back on campus - 130 (With our Facebook outreach, students were challenged to initiate conversations online using social media. Through many of the conversations these meetings were set up to continue their spiritual conversation.) 

God used Winter Conference in my life as a student and its no different today as staff. As we spent time reflecting on human nature in Romans 1-3 (we are DEAD), I became in awe of the gospel yet again. I think most Christians can slip into a season of going through the motions. My voice speaks the gospel, but my heart doesn't resonate with it. My heart was overwhelmed by grace and the cross at this conference. I was reminded how much I need Jesus and how much my friends/family/neighbors need Jesus too. Challenged to proclaim his name to people every where. Take time to ask questions and LISTEN to people. I was challenged to ALWAYS be plugged into my power source: The Holy Spirit. I have never wept for the nations before. I think Christ is working on my heart for the nations. I know there is more, but I need to continue to process things with the Lord. As soon as the talks are posted in mp3 on the WC website I will post them here. You will be blessed by listening to our speakers...promise you that. 

Can't wait for WC 2013!

-Kelli