Annual Conference Time

Today was the pre-conference gathering time for Annual Conference in Lakeland. 

We left the house this morning, arriving in time to grab lunch, check in to our hotel 

and register for conference before the first thing on our agenda.  

Daryl is the chairperson this year for the Shade and Fresh Water Ministry, 

and he had a shift in the ministry expo from 2-4:30pm

While he was doing that, the boys and I explored the other booths and ran a few errands. 

When Daryl was done the whole family went to volunteer for Stop Hunger Now. 

This is a ministry where you package meals for 25 cents a piece. 

The food is then distributed around the world in needy areas. 

Our bishop has challenged the Florida Conference of the UMC to package 1 million meals this year, 

with a kickoff of 100,000 meals packaged at Annual Conference. 

The youth at Belleview UMC raised over $3,000 for this over the last few months, 

and will be packaging 12,000 meals on June 29th. 

Since we will be in China then, we volunteered today so that the boys would still get a chance to experience this. Here we are in our spiffy hair nets getting ready to watch the training video. 

The view from our spot in the packaging room. 

Groups of five gathered around the funnels to put in the vitamin packets, soy, vegetables and rice. 

Then the bags came to our table to be weighed and sealed. 

Daryl and I both worked the sealer machines and the boys were runners, 

carrying the sealed bags to the table to be packaged in the boxes (36 per box). 

After every 1,000 meals were bagged, someone got to bang the gong up front. 

Wesley and Parker got to celebrate our first 2,000 meals packaged. 

In a little under an hour on our shift, our group of volunteers packaged about 6,000 meals. 

After volunteering, Daryl and I had a training meeting for a new Discipleship Experience during

conference on Thursday and Friday. Parker and Wesley entertained themselves with toys....

And by hanging out! 

Dinner was last on our agenda and we made it to Buffalo Wild Wings before calling it a night.