Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Florida Fun (but not in the sun)




For the weekend of June 22nd-25th, four girls from Kansas decided to attend the Gospel Coalition Women’s Conference.  The speakers included Tim Keller, John Piper, Nancy Leigh DeMoss, and Carolyn Mahaney, among many other excellent individuals.  We also attended 3 workshops, although there were 19 different ones to choose from.  We were all very pleased to learn that the plenaries and workshops are available to listen to online.  You can even listen in Mandarin Chinese if you please.   

The information that we learned was very deep and instructive for our spiritual walks.  I was not able to attend the first 2 plenaries, so I have enjoyed catching up on those, as well as listening to some of the other workshops.  Keith and Kristyn Getty led us in worship with some rousing modern Celtic hymn arrangements.  Below is a link for one of my favorite songs we sang, which reminded us all what we will one day enjoy:  worshiping our Lord forever, face to face.


After our conference ended at noon on Sunday and some of us enjoyed naps, we decided to take the trolley to Sea World.  We had been enjoying our indoor surroundings while attending the conference since the tropical climate was blessing central Florida with an abundance of rainfall.  This meant we joined the other tourists in Orlando in using rain jackets, umbrellas, and ponchos.  I don’t think I have ever seen so many ponchos at one time.  However, there is only so much protection they can afford.  We discovered that after walking to the trolley stop and waiting in the rain for 20+ minutes, we were damp and cold.  The benefit of visiting Sea World in the rain is that we didn’t have to deal with very many other park attendees in rushing from show to show; we all got to see what we wanted to before  the park closed early due to inclement weather.  

After we got back to our hotel Sunday night, we were excited to enjoy our pizza delivered to the hotel.  No one wanted to venture back out in the pouring rain to get some dinner.  We watched some TV and decided to hit the sack.

Monday morning brought more rain and dashed our plans to see the beach, so we decided to take advantage of the concierge desk.  Note: if you ever need anything while staying in a hotel, the concierge is the best resource in getting directions, maps, discounted tickets, and advice on what to do when you have nothing else you can do b/c of the rain.  We took their advice and decided to take the trolley to an outlet mall.  After being drenched once again, we were relieved when the rain let up for a while so we could dart from store to store in search of bargains.

After our shopping expedition, we returned to the airport for our journey home.  We were excited to literally see some blue sky country, but we were not eagerly anticipating 100+ temps.  Despite experiencing lots of rain, the temps while we were in FL stayed in the 80s.  We never thought we would have to fly to “sunny” Florida to cool down. traveling to “sunny Florida,”



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