Joel's adventure part 1

Only one week after arriving in Texas, Joel left to drive to Greenville, South Carolina for a business conference. Joel is involved with a marketing business on the side to try and help generate some extra income so that someday when he is a youth pastor they won't have to worry about how to pay the bills so that Laurie can stay home when they have children (which is not yet in case some of you are wondering). Joel wanted to go back for the conference, and got a really good excuse to go when his brother and sister-in-law had their first baby (that's right Joel is an uncle!) on January 3rd. Ben, Stephane and Linnea live in Rock Hill which is about 2 hours from Greenville. Joel was able to spend some time with them on January 11th and 12th before his conference. Here are some pictures of the proud uncle.

Ain't she precious!? Just 9 days old.

I wish I could sleep like that.

Linnea and her uncle Joel talk about the upcoming Bears playoff game where they expect the Bears to advance to the NFC championship.

Joel had a fabulos weekend at the conference although he missed Laurie greatly and wished that she could have been with him. The weekend was simply amazing as Joel learned a lot about the business that he is now apart of. The best part was hearing many of the leaders share the love of Christ and how it motivates them to excell. On Sunday morning there was a worship service that everyone was invited to attend (there were around 11,000 people at the conference and most of them came to the Sunday morning worship service). The Main speaker for the weekend, Larry Winter, shared his testimony and a very powerful and clear presentation of the gospel. Hundreds of people commited their lives to Christ, including 3 members of the team that I am on. It was truly awesome! It was especially cool to see a video from Josh McDowell talking about how great the leaders in our business are. He works with one of the leaders in a ministry called Outreach America which shares Christ with kids through sports camps with top atheletes like Shaun Alexander (NFL MVP 2005). [Stay tuned for part 2]