GAFCON: A Life Changing Experience

Been spending some time talking to those are now back from GAFCON in Jerusalem and hearing their amazing stories - and there are so many stories not only in their words but in their faces. They are radiant! Their stories are filled with examples of how the journey changed their lives - a simply extraordinary event, a real pilgrimage. Indeed, you can see it on the faces in this video. For every person we see - and some of the photos include over a thousand people - for every person we see there are stories of how their lives were changed in Jerusalem. What is God doing?

On a lighter note, I heard one story about a grand attempt to gather everyone together for photographs. The delegates were being asked to group themselves by province so that a photo could be taken of each province, but the delegates were so mixed in with everyone else that moving 1,200 into provinces became an effort of momentous proportions. They were having too much fun.

The first step was to get everyone's attention (a challenge in itself), then ask everyone to group themselves into provinces (which meant they had to stop talking to each other and start moving), and then they had to figure out where all the provinces were. It took a long time just to get people to listen they were having so much fun (no wonder Jesus called us all sheep) and by the time some had started to form groups, it was challenging to figure out where you actually belonged.

Cue the Australians. They came up with a brilliant idea to find all the other Aussies that were deep in the crowd enjoying themselves. Their province started to sing Waltzing Matilda and it wasn't long before all the Australians were gathered and carrying on with round after round of Waltzing Matilda. Not to be outdone, the Ugandans starting singing a Ugandan chant and it wasn't long before the entire conference was a mass of singing.

And it worked. They got the photos.

And so in honor of those innovative Australians - thank God you are here! - we offer this: