That’s Swell

Well after a 5-day roadtrip, paying around $25 in toll fees, and too many days of eating out, we are finally back to Wisconsin.

It was a really good trip, we were able to stop in Goshen, Indiana for Friday and Saturday night and visit my aunt, cousin and my sister. It’s the first time we’ve been able to visit her at school (she has been there 3 years), so it was nice to finally see the campus and meet her friends. We also we able to visit Shipshewana, an Amish community, and do a little shopping. They even sell organic food in bulk at the Amish stores!

Then on Sunday we left to visit Granger Community Church for their 11am service, then continued on to Grand Rapids and made it to the Mars Hill 6pm service.

Then we attended the Isn’t She Beautiful? Conference at Mars Hill on Monday and Tuesday, then travelled home on Wednesday. David blogged his notes from the conference, when I get a chance I will comment on things I learned, but for now you can refer to his notes to see what happened.

I really enjoyed the conference and highly recommend it to any church leader. It was really geared towards ministry leaders/staff/pastors – not so much for volunteers (as most the Willow ones can be). The main thing was that I felt I actually came away feeling refreshed and renewed. Not overwhelmed. Mras Hill did a good job at presenting things in a way that were “do-able.” After leaving other church conferences I usually feel overwhelmed and exhausted, and usually feeling to inadequate because our church budget will never allow me to do the things they do. But Mars Hill was really good about making you realize what works for their church, probably won’t work for yours, that you have to figure it out for yourself.  So they more tried to inspire you and help you ‘catch the vision’ for what they do, then to not give you too many ideas, because you need to figure out what works for your church/area. I really liked this way of teaching. It made me think more. I didn’t just get a ‘list’ of how to make it happen – I have to really search it out on my own to see what works for the Fox Valley.

I was very impressed by how much Mars Hill gives back to the community. They have a very “back-to-basics” or “bare-bones” ministry approach – so most of the tithes/money coming in goes OUT of the church and in to the community.

One example, the money made from the conference. David and I paid around $100 each for our tickets (we got the early bird special!) and there was about 2,000 people in attendance. This is how it breaks down:

$195,000 – profit
-$40,000 – expenses (food, lanyards, etc.)
__________
$155,000 – goes to charity

What did they do with the $155,00 dollars?
(I forgot to write down the dollar exact amount breakdowns)

• Rain Water Harvesting System for a Rwanda school so the kids can have water to drink (I believe was around $20,000, but not sure)
• Microfinance Loans to citizens of Burundi, the poorest African country (where the average income per year is $90 per person and 56.8% of kids are malnourished)
• Microfinance Loans to citizens of Grand Rapids (11.9% of families in Grand Rapids are living below the poverty line) – Mars Hill is very intentional about not just doing work overseas, but doing work in their own backyard.