SETHSA 2010 & Baptism Decisions & VBS

I have been wanting to blog about my recent trip to the SETHSA Conference in Houston, TX, but time is a fleeting commodity around here. I left on June 3rd before the sun was up with a group of six ladies total to attend and be volunteers for the conference. We were in charge of helping direct attendees around the new venue, the Houston Baptist University Campus. It was a beautiful location. My team of ladies was the most delightful group of ladies that could possibly exist. Our team was so self-sacrificing. It seemed that everyone in our group was more concerned with others in the group being happy than their own happiness! It was refreshing and relaxing to be with such a wonderful group. We were provided rooms in the dorms and there were no complaints from our little team of ladies. We did have some issues with upper bunk beds, but our ladies quickly solved the problem by setting their matresses on the floor. Voila! No upper bunk beds to have to climb into. We had to divide our time up to be able to cover our work duties and still get to attend some of the workshop we wanted to experience and it went so well. I am in awe of these ladies and how quick they were to sacrifice what they wanted to be "fair" to one another! Truly they were the biggest blessing for me from attending this conference!

What made me laugh and cry at the same time? Todd Wilson of www.familymanministries.com !!! I could so totally relate to the the stories he told of life with children and homeschooling and I was moved to tears, while laughing hysterically, listening to hime talk about a true family man. I have a true family man in my house.... and he was back at home happy to take care of my four kiddos, so that I could attend this conference. I was missing them all terribly, too. I was quite excited to get to buy my hubby a T-Shirt from this family of ten for a mere $10 that says "Family Man" on it.

Also, Todd Wilson was the opening Keynote Speaker for the conference and he talked about the Dream Killers.... those people that are always killing your dreams. There is great power in words... they can be dream killing or dream reviving. He finished with reminding us not to be the dream killers for our children! It was very powerful.

Another thing that impacted me were the workshops about focusing on making a "heart change" in your children rather than focusing on discipline punishments. The speaker was Debbie Bryan from The National Center for Biblical Parenting. In the future I might try to blog about this in more depth, but I would just say that is worth researching on your own and I will leave you with this from my workshop notes: It is not about the suffering... It is about the heart change! So, we want to work on character training and not making our kids "pay" for how they have done wrong.

I also got to hear Debbie Strayer speak about using a unified approach to tying teaching together. It was great stuff! A brief example would be to have the child do some writing, then use that writing to develop that child's spelling list, as well as, focus on the grammatical errors that child is making. She is a friend to Ruth Beechick and her Editor. She is co-author of the Learning Language Arts Through Literature Series and she the co-author to a new curriculum that looks fabulous called Trail Guide to Learning by Geography Matters. Now, I am not running out to switch from My Father's World, but it looks good... just saying. I am sticking right where I am at, but it might be something I look at one day... just never know.

Well, that is my brief run down in these stolen moments. I came back Saturday just in time to snuggle with my kiddos before bedtime and tuck them in. Sunday we went to church and my SIX YEAR OLD, SIERRA, WALKED DOWN TO MAKE HER PUBLIC PROFESSION OF FAITH AND SHE IS EAGER TO BE BAPTIZED!!! Yippee!!! She truly is ready! And now we are on Day Four of our VBS week and it is amazing, also! Life is grand!!