Passion Conference, Part 1

As I mentioned yesterday, I had the privilege of attending the Passion Conference down in Houston, TX this past weekend. I have wanted to go to the conference since 8^th grade, but wasn’t old enough until this year. I found out that the college group from our area was going, and I was able to join them!

We met at the community college early Friday morning. After filling out our emergency contact forms, eating some breakfast, and loading up our luggage, we pulled out! Our group had about 25 people from 4 different churches/groups.

The drive was about 6 hours long including our lunch stop. I had a nice time chatting with others I didn’t know, reading a school book, and napping. For lunch, we parked in a parking lot surrounded by a whole bunch of restaurants. We split up into a few groups to eat. I went with some folks over to Chili’s to get lunch To-Go. I had never eaten there before; it was good!

Then we continued on our drive.

The event—and our hotel—were in downtown Houston. I’m always overwhelmed by how large everything is!

When you have 20,000 people all trying to get to the same area, there will inevitably be some transportation issues. Plus you have all the Friday night traffic of people trying to leave the downtown area. We drove around downtown Houston for quite awhile trying to figure out where we could park. By the time we got things all sorted out, we had about 15 minutes in our rooms to freshen up before leaving again!

I was grateful to be rooming with 3 other girls that I had met before. While all four of us are quite different personality-wise, we also had quite a bit in common regarding more important things such as our life purposes.

We started to walk towards the conference center. We ended up eating McDonald’s for dinner because it was on our way and quite fast. It was the first time I had eaten there in 3 years!

Once we finished eating, we walked to the conference center. The number of people there was incredible. The conference had completely sold out!

We got good seats despite the fact our group was so large! That was thanks to a few people who went ahead of us to save seats. J

The conference began with an Introduction Session. The Passion Band led worship. This band included Chris Tomlin, Kristian Stanfill, Christy and Nathan Nockles, Brett Younker, and more! Right away, I knew the worship time over the weekend was going to be incredible.

It was a really late night! The second session didn’t start until 10:30 p.m., my normal bedtime. J In between the two sessions, Capital Kings played music. I was pleasantly surprised, as I wasn’t expecting them to be there, but I like their music! Things only got better from there! Louie Giglio spoke that night on Isaiah 6:1-5. He focused on us seeing a glimpse of God’s glory. He also gave a very clear presentation of the Gospel, which was a wonderful way to start off the weekend.

The evening ended in an incredible time of worship led by Hillsong United. I was pretty indifferent to their music beforehand, but wow! The Holy Spirit was truly at work that night; it was one of the most incredible times of worship I’ve ever experienced.

We didn’t leave the conference center until about 12:30 a.m. After such an incredible night, most of us weren’t ready for bed yet. J My roommates and I joined some others in their room to talk. We didn’t end up going to bed until about 3 a.m.

Since we went to bed so late, 6:30 a.m. came quite quickly. I got up first, showered, and then did my devotions. Another one of the girls got up after me to get ready, and then the two of us went downstairs for breakfast.

But we discovered that the restaurant at the hotel (Einstein Bros. Bagels) was quite expensive. Another girl had come down and discovered the same thing. We decided that in favor of our wallets, we would walk down to McDonald's for breakfast. The group would be walking past there, and we would join them at 8:15 as planned.

That morning, David Crowder led worship, and Francis Chan spoke. I am familiar with his books and work, so I was excited to hear from him. He spoke on 2 Peter 1:1-9. One of my favorite takeaways from his talk was “Everything we see is temporary; what is invisible is eternal.”

 

Then we broke for lunch. It was incredible how they were able to feed 20,000 of us and keep it organized! They did a great job.

Enjoying lunch with some of the new friends I made from our group!

To be continued . . .