On the weekend of March 17-19, I attended the second annual South Eastern Youth Conference (SEYC) in Collegedale, Tennessee, on the campus of Southern Adventist University. This was my first SEYC experience, and I was eagerly anticipating it.
With the help of my friends the Santos family, I found a hotel not far from campus, which I shared with Samuel Santos. We arrived late Friday night, maybe 30 minutes or so into the main meeting. The featured speaker was Mark Finley of It Is Written, and all of his messages were excellent. I also enjoyed seminars by Dr. Ron Clouzet, who is a faculty member of SAU and previous guest speaker at the General Youth Conference (GYC) meetings. The messages were clear and powerful, and I felt blessed spiritually to be there.
The SEYC meetings are modeled after GYC, and many of the SEYC officers are previous GYC attendees. SEYC is regional, so the number of regular attendees was significantly less than GYC’s. There were not as many seminars to choose from, although the available ones looked impressive. The event was shorter, running from Friday night through Saturday evening, with an outreach planned on Sunday. Unlike GYC, the event was free, except we had to arrange for our own lodging and meals. My friends Diana and Sara Santos and Jenny Brain took care of my meals, including an awesome Sabbath lunch with vegan lasagna and two kinds of cheesecake. Yummm!
It was great to see so many people: My good friend Adrian is an SEYC officer, and he introduced me to some of his friends. The 3ABN road crew was there, along with others from my home area, including most of our local church young adult group. I was surprised to see my cousin Greg with his wife Linda, and Crystal and Wendell. We spent a few moments catching up, and I gave them a “backstage” mini-tour of 3ABN’s production truck.
On Sunday I stopped at my mom’s house on the return trip to see if I could fix her computer. It had been practically totaled due to runaway virus and other infections, and seemed to have other problems as well. (Note to self: Never, ever, ever recommend an eMachine to anyone! For that matter, I kept asking myself why I hadn’t bought her a Mac. None of this ever would have happened.) I had a major unexpected setback: My mom had asked her phone company to discontinue service. No phone meant no internet, which meant major hassles getting the computer up and running. It took me all day, but I finally got the computer to a semi-usable state (everything installed but the anti-virus software, which perversely refused to install). Unfortunately I was not able to do more, since I still had a 6-hour drive ahead of me. As it was, I got home a little past midnight. Nice to be in my own bed!
Oddly, my camera refused to work virtually all weekend, so I was unable to take any pictures of my friends or SEYC. However, I couldn’t resist snapping this photo of a horse and buggy passing by my mom’s house:
Recent Comments