#ARUMC16 has nothing on this past week’s Rocky Mountain Annual Conference.
When it comes to the busiest week of the summer, the week of Annual Conference certainly holds that title, no question. However, I found this week, though not without its challenges, to be one of the best, if not the best, Annual Conference I have ever attended.
Let me set the stage for you first. From Monday to Wednesday, the office was in full-on prep mode. Equipment was assembled into kits, labeled, and sent to the Marriott – Denver Tech Center; rooms were examined and figured into the overall audio-visual setup plans; everyone was running around busy. To be honest, I don’t even remember much of the pre-Conference goings-on.
But then Thursday hit, and. Well. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
I’m actually currently working with the raw footage from the Conference right now, and from that, there’s a piece that I definitely want to share with you: Bishop Oliveto’s closing sermon. If you read or watch nothing else, definitely watch this sermon when it gets polished and released.
One more thing: those of you who read my “Interning with the ARUMC” blog, and specifically the post from #ARUMC16, know that I was nicknamed “The Candy Man” during that Conference due to my…shall we say large intake of candy. As I put it in my post “Week of #arumc16: The Candy Man Can“:
As I was helping to set everything up, I ate lots of candy to get me through it all. And one day, I ate nothing but candy to get me through. I didn’t want to miss any of the action, or not learn how to do something, so I just kept a stash of candy with me the whole time. Therefore, Rob [Walker] proceeded to call me “the candy man” all week long, and it wasn’t too long for the rest of the staff, from Mark [Epperson] (my boss) to Mackey [Yokem] (the outgoing Director of Mission and Ministry) to call me that. All. Week. Long.
This time around, however, I didn’t eat as much candy (okay, I snuck the occasional Jolly Rancher from the Conference Office located in one of the hotel’s conference rooms). What I didn’t eat in candy, however, I made up in buttons.
You see, the vendors and organizations at the Rocky Mountain Annual Conference had lots of little shiny things at their tables to catch passerby’s eyes, and none were more shiny to me than the glossy buttons that were on so many of the tables. And, well, my nametag ended up looking like this:
I think it’s safe to say I enjoyed my week.
Until next time,
Jacob
FAST FACTS:
- This week’s pizzeria: Blackjack Pizza in Denver, CO
- Trips taken on The Ride (RTD): more than 1, less than 100
- Music I listened to while writing this: a combination of Young the Giant, The Lumineers, Sundara Karma, and Coldplay
- Number of deals I’ve gotten at the local Safeway: enough to make me want to campaign to bring them back to Arkansas
JacobTurner.me 