HSLT!!!!!!! part one, spiritual

It was the most amazing week.

Application fee: $25.
Cost of conference: $325.
Souveniers: $18.
A week spent with your best friends and God: priceless.

It really was. Kristin, our leader, kept saying how precious and rare a week just concentrating on your relationship with God is. All week we had the analogy going of a person being like a tree by a stream. Tree=person, stream/water=God. The stream was in flood at LT, and she kept saying how we should dig our roots deep while we could, so that when the drought comes we'll be deep enough not to die. I thought also of how wet ground is really soft, and, I would imagine, easy to get roots down into. But in a drought, the ground is hard as a rock. I don't know anything about how much tree's roots grow in drought, but I'd be surprised if they grew very much, what with the soil being so hard, and not having enough energy-from-water.
That was our running analogy.

It was extremely weird to see how many "coincidences" happened, just how many times, with all the variety of subjects that could be taught, we kept hearing the same things from different sources. I think God was trying to bring to our attention how powerful and involved he is, and that was his wake-up call.

There is nothing like living in a condo with 6 girls all trying to build each other up and serve each other. We started using the word edify a lot, which basically means to build each other up. You really don't notice how many of your jokes are tearing down or picking on other people until you start trying to stop making them. We did each other's hair, played with each other's hair (I love having my hair played with!), and generally put others first. Therefore, we had no fights or squabbles and if we did they were over so quickly that I don't remember them.

The teachings were amazing, you can go to the LT website (it's in my Links list) to hear them, I think, and they said they would put down all the resources they used in the teachings.

The worship was...supercalifragalistikexpealadocious. There aren't good enough adjectives in the english language to describe it. 400 teens, on their knees, hands in the air, or jumping up and down. Tuesday night was amazing. I don't think any of us are the same people we were before tuesday night. They had stories from the gospels and revelation on the back wall/scree for powerpoint. We prayed that God would reveal himself to us and show us his face, and he totally did. I prayed that God would show me his glory, picturing the type of stuff in revelation, the king on the throne kind of thing. But God showed me his glory was in his humility, the type of stuff in the gospels. That night was totally life-changing.

The whole experience was life-changing. It was also better than last year. Meg says it might be because we're more mature and can get more out of it. Patrick says it just gets better every year. If so, next year is going to rock our socks off.

But the thing that would ruin the whole experience is if we forgot it. Forgot what God told us. Forgot what we learned. Forgot what serving and edifying is like. Forgot what being open friends is like. Forgot. That would be a tragedy. So pray that we don't forget.