Na: Day One

So I'm gonna start a recap of all that happened at New Attitude. You've read about the trip there, so I'll just add some funny things that happened. When we stopped for lunch, it was a gas station/Subway and most of us ate there. Stephen was dying for some coffee. You should have seen him frantically search the exit food signs for a Starbucks. So he and couple of guys went to Wendy's and he managed to get some hot water to make coffee. Jonny Altrogge and I randomly decided to get cheapo nerf guns that the gas station had. We spent the rest of the trip ambushing each other. We finally pulled into the Gault House hotel around 4-4:30pm. And so started the crazy rush that is arriving at New Attitude.

After everyone's luggage was off, Stephen and I took the vans to park them. As we entered, there's that height bar hanging and both vans scraped it. I was was pretty nervous that the vans would scape inside. The whole time I was ducking my head (as if that made a difference). But there was enough clearance and after parking in the farthest point away possible, we returned to the hotel. I had been calling Aaron to get into the room, but he wasn't picking up (seems like no one did all of Na). I really didn't wanna be standing there forever, so I tried Josh and Shanna to see they knew where he was. He finally called me and I went up to the room. He and I went and got registered and then I went to see Gen, who was on the same floor as us, which was pretty cool. I went over to the first session with her and a few of her roommates.

Worship started, it was loud and sounded like crap, but definitely better then last year. Usually it really distracts me, but God gave me grace to be able to worship undistracted. There was the usual 4-5 songs that no one knew (at least outside of Cov Life). That's one of the things that bothers me, they always sing lots of new songs, and most of the time they are not that great. There are some outstanding songs that aren't new. Oh and what is wrong with original version of hymns? Stephen and I were talking about this and the one song Nail My Glory in particular was kinda odd, and left him wondering what he was singing. After worship Josh Harris opened the conference with a message what the right response to God's word is. He gave three examples from scripture: Josiah (2nd Kings 22), Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 36), and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 15).

After the message we splint into community groups. This year they really separated everyone. There were two people I knew in my group. Zac Dimaio and Rachael Efthimiou. That was it. We were lead by Jimmy Canon (?). The group was then made into about a dozen smaller family groups and mine was led by a guy named Seth Ranneberger. We spent most of the time just getting to know one another. There was a girl in my family group, Liz Dudley, who grew up in Indiana and knew everybody, which I thought was pretty cool. The community groups ended and Zac and I went searching for food. We went to Champions and were eventually joined by Gen and Lauren. Actually a little later a big group from Cov Fell showed up. Zac and I headed back to the hotel after eating. I pretty much just hit the sack (I'm not a young as I used to be).

Andrew and Courtney crashed in our room, because they had reserved their room for the day before and since they weren't there, they lost the reservation. They got a room for the last two nights, but had to stay in ours the first. I ripped some blankets from the two beds for them and we all settled in to sleep.