Greetings From California!

Sarrah and Emma here wanting to tell you about our conference week. Our flight was very smooth and we arrived right on schedule. The hotel is gorgeous except for the fact that the fire alarm went off this morning at 6:14am. We are all perfectly fine just a little annoyed...but still happy and thankful. Saddleback church is amazing and huge, we were all shocked and awed by its size. Now the conference...

In short, it was AMAZING!! In long...we learned a lot about leadership, fellowship, disciplship, worship, friendship, and surrender-ship of our lives to God. The speakers were incredible! We heard from Doug Fields, Matt McGill, Erik Rees, Jeff Maquire, Kay Warren, and Cristopher "Taffy" Taffala. We also heard from Zach Hunter, a 15 year old abolitionist who continues to prove that students can make a difference in the world. Each speaker/guest was inspiring in their own way and helped us to think, grow, and lead. One of the main things that was stressed was that "leaders are learners." They said that in order to lead we had to constantly be learning new things and letting God take the reigns of our lives.

At one point during the conference they gave each group a project to do in the community around the church. We were assigned the task of collecting canned goods for disadvantaged families. We started out by asking large supermarkets and stores. When that didn't work too well we went to local neighborhoods asking house to house. We ended up collecting 172 non-perishable goods. All the way from food to diapers, covering all ends at once. :-) After collecting our goods, we decided to help another team doing the same thing. We pooled our money and bought about 100 items to help another group meet their collection goal.

Today we meet up with the rest of our team and will be moving to the CSM building for the next leg of our journey. Thanks for the prayers! We will continue to be amazed by what God does...

In Him.
Sarrah and Emma

P.s. Lauren, Emily, Skylar, LeAnn and Craig say hi :)