conference season

I'm restless. Each evening after dinner, the TV rumbling away in the background, I pore over our New Zealand atlas looking for towns that I have yet to visit and searching for the familiar dotted lines that signify a hiking route. I wish I could be spending this barely-employed season out on the trail having active adventures, but for now I have to be satisfied with adventures of a different sort, and so we've signed ourselves up for a couple of conferences in the next month. This weekend, on the anniversary of our arrival in New Zealand (it feels like so long ago!), we're heading down to Dunedin with the youth group for their annual Branded conference, which is held at the church that I visited a few weeks ago with Ann-Kristin. We're excited to hear from some good speakers and do some networking, but mainly it's a chance to get out of Christchurch for a bit.

But what we're looking forward to most is next month's trip up to Auckland's North Shore for the ACTS National Conference. We're flying up, which turns an otherwise minor trip into a grand travel experience, and will spend four weekdays with staff and leaders from churches in our movement around New Zealand. This will be especially beneficial because in a couple of months (and keep this on the down low while it's finalized) we're going to be adding the children's ministry to our portfolio at the church, a huge addition that will require a large portion of our time and wisdom far beyond what we currently hold, but exactly what we wanted to be doing. It will be wonderful to kick off that new season with a hefty dose of vision and inspiration at the National Conference, and it will also be wonderful to spend the early days of spring up north where the warm weather arrives first.

Loving New Zealand even more every day,

-Rachel