Women of Faith Weekend

This past Friday, after my doctor's appointment my friends (Anne, Debbie and Jenny) and I checked in to a hotel downtown Portland for the Women of Faith Conference. This was my 3rd or 4th time to the conference, Anne had been a few times as well, but it was Debbie and Jenny's first time.

Before we left for the conference, we went out for tacos/burritos at Chapotle. Once we were done we got on MAX and experienced a ride like no other...wall to wall women! It was such a chatty commute. There were really only a few men on the train and you could feel their anxiety level increase at each stop as more and more women boarded.



Once we got in to the Rose Garden we scrambled around to find our seats. When Anne ordered the tickets the only remaining seats were way up in the nose bleed seats on the 300 level. For those of you who have never experienced the 300 level...it feels pretty much like you are going to fall off the side of a mountain. You can barely make out who's on the platform...and that's when your watching on the large monitors all around...forget trying to see them with your naked eyes! It wasn't long before Jenny started to feel sick. Anne went and talked with an usher about getting seats on a lower level. All four of us waited in line to find out we had to wait in another line to buy the tickets. For $20 more we landed ourselves in the best seats in the house!!!

We just upgraded and were now seated the floor level in the 5th row!!! Thanks Jenny! It was so great to be so close to all the speakers and performers. We laughed and cried our way through some amazing stories.

Here is a shot of what it looks like when 18,000 women all come together for worship. It was awesome! After the first night we all went back to the hotel to eat chocolate and watch tv. Since there was nothing really good on, we just crashed...sorry Chris, no pillow fight!

The next morning we got up, had breakfast and went back to the Women of Faith conference.

Starbucks anyone? I don't think the garbages look like this before a Blazer game!!

The speakers were all so great. I really enjoyed myself so much more this time than before and could really relate a lot to the motherhood humor.







Highlights for me...
Anita Renfroe was soooo funny. You can see some of her comedy on YouTube. Her total momsense can be seen here. It has been going around in emails and blogs for a few months so you may have already seen it. I was so excited to learn that we would be seeing here as part of the conference. She also had a hilarious rendition of Faith Hill's song "Breathe" called "Don't Breathe" about her husband's morning breath. She created a video that went along while she sang that was hysterical...All the speakers were funny and had great story telling abilities, but Anita was my favorite.


And the winner for most likely to make a room full of women cry goes to Sandi Patty. While she was singing, like only Sandi Patty can, a young Down's Syndrome girl was signing with her. As the story goes Lisa was learning to sign along with Sandi Patty's CDs and she told her mom that she wanted to sign with her one day on stage. Well, Lisa's mom just kind of dismissed the idea, but once while in the audience at Sandi Patty's concerts, Sandi saw her and asked her to come on stage and she now tours with her once a month. Lisa's enthusiasm was contagious and brought tears to everyone in the Rose Quarter whenever she was on stage.