Together.

We were off to San Diego together again...with a little more successful early morning beginning than our last trip. Except our alarm never went off. And we awoke to the sound of the doorbell at 4:45am. But we still got on the road earlier than before. We were off to the city of beautiful weather, cool breezes, beaches, friends, sunshine without heat....did I mention that it's less hot there? But we aren't "grumbling and complaining" after listening to the excellent messages by Mark Mullery on unbelief...we're just stating the facts of our time together at "Together '06".
Adventures on the way there included many, many bathroom breaks in unfriendly places. Caravaning together can provide its challenges with a Suburban full of different people with different capacities, if you know what I mean, and a Santa Fe equally as requiring. Some of our stops included "El Cajon" which fondly became known as "the pit"-- a city that you couldn't get out of; and a little town off of the I-8 where we happened upon an unfriendly resturant with a sign that said "Restrooms are for paying customers only. Cash only. No credit cards accepted. Don't even ask." Of course Jordan and Seth had forgotten their wallets; and Clay and Travis don't carry cash. No luck there.

The weekend was for the purpose of being "together". It is a weekend conference made of 4 different churches out West who join to hear the word of God preached and spend time together in a beautiful place. A little history-- the conference for the first year was called Together '05 and this year it was Together '06....the question is: how do you find a conference which name changes every year? So one of the San Diego pastor's gave it a new, improved identity: Together Whatever. We also had the fabulous oppurtunity of meeting and greeting old friends like the Lauterbach's and our friends the Whites, who moved last year across the country from Covenant Life to Grace Church in San Diego. We also made better friends with Clay and Haley Richardson who kindly agreed to share the ride, and the gas money, with us. We throughly enjoyed our time with them on our drives to and forth from Phoenix.
Together is the best of all conferences. It has friends, adventures, messages, awesome worship...and then in the afternoon, instead of sweating it out playing sports, you watch the ocean lap up to your feet at the beach. It made all the difference to get there early, check in, get settled, then go straight to the beach. We also took another afternoon to go with a group of friends to Coronado Island to go again. Except this time our challenge wasn't finding lunch. (The day before, our only problem was to find a "cheap" lunch, of which we quickly found out there are very few places along the coastline that meet this qualification). On the way back from the beach, while we were driving on the highway, a car side-swiped our brand new Santa Fe. It was a car full of Marines, who had probably missed their exit and turned before looking next to them. They never admitted their fault but when the state patrol came, they changed their story and said that we veered into them. Oppurtunities to trust the Lord. We have fun confidence that God is working all things together for His good. And Mark Mullery preached an amazing sermon on unbelief versus faith. This is another reason to exercise faith as defined so well by Mark: "Faith is believing confidantly that God will fulfill His promises".