As I am sitting here in plenary (very cold might I add because they for some reason like to have the air on full blast) I look back on the past few days. I am trying to bring myself to this place. For some reason, there are times when I look back on things, and realize that I wasn't completely there. I realize that this doesn't make much sense, but I'm just trying to remember everything that happens here and to make sure that I am fully here.
Yesterday morning, we had opening worship, heard the nominations for the University Senate and Judicial Council, introduced the affliated autonomous methodist church, affliated united church, and concordat church delegates, and BISHOP TOM gave a speech for NOTHING BUT NETS. (we raised $13,530 that morning!) Then we broke and got into legislative committees.
In committee we first attempted to tackle the petitions with financial implications because other bodies need to deal with them. My committee is pretty friendly, and it is very accepting of the youth and young adults! However, you definitely begin to see the people who want to hold things up or who form little groups to try and sway certain petitions. Overall, we have been fairly successful.
When we broke for lunch yesterday, Kurt and I went to a lunch for transgender people. It was pretty cool, and then we went across the street to join the Mosaic people in their drumming. They were going to be drumming for 24 hours until this afternoon into their rally.
After lunch, it was back to committee. I am beginning to realize that I really like to be in committee. I enjoy wording petitions and discussing their purposes. Nothing too exciting happened. For dinner the delegation plus Heather went out to dinner for Bruce's birthday!
After dinner, back to committee again, but this time we broke up into sub-committees. I am on the sub-committee dealing with racial and ethnic petitions. Last night we got through 6 petitions, and we have 7 left to cover today. Sub-committees are a lot less formal than the main committee and definitely more than plenary. I like being able to talk with one another (there are 11 of us in my sub-committee) and to discuss what we truly understand from the petition.
We got out around 10:30pm. I met up with Heather, and we went out to rejoin the Mosaic people drumming. I went back to my hotel, organized my papers and read over a few things, and went to bed.
This morning, I went to breakfast and ended up talking with a woman, Sandy, from Ohio. I walked to the convention center (passing Mosaic once again), went into worship, and am sitting here now while some are giving short presentations. Later this morning, we will return to committees and try to finish up our petitions, especially the financial ones.
It is evident that people are beginning to push more for their beliefs, espeically the people against LGBT people. I pray that we can be an accepting church. We shall see what happens today and the next.
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