Passion 2016

Guys. If you ever have an opportunity to attend (either as a student or a leader) DO IT!!!!

This was such an awesome experience! I wish I would have known about this when I was in college- that's how great it is.

The speakers that we got to hear were Louie Giglio, John Piper, Raavi Zacharias, Levi Lusko, and Christine Caine. Now let me just preface this with the fact that I don't particularly enjoy listening to speakers on the Internet. I just can't stay focused enough. However, most of these people I would 100% listen to in the future, and have already started checking out!

Louie was entertaining, and overall tried really hard to be relatable to the college students, which I think is great since that was who the conference was trying to target.

John was crazy knowledgable and made some points that I doubt I would have ever thought of on my own (also, whoa.).

Raavi was totes one of my faves, and really made me miss college and the professors that made me forget that I was in class.

Levi Lusko made me bawl my eyes out during his interview, but I ordered his book once we got home.

Christine Caine - we all agreed that she knew what she needed to say, and she didn't care about who was offended by it. Hands down, she was the group favorite (at least for our crew). One of my favorite quotes from her session is: "We pray for God to send us a revival, but He looks at us and says 'I did! It's in you.'" Dang, girl. She also talked about how she isn't sure that a generation of people that is so apathetic is going to be able to be servants for His kingdom. Preach. Also, she was salty. I loved her.

The bands that were there were sooooo good! We got to see Matt Redman, Rend Collective (who jumped way up my list of favorite artists... also, one of my coworkers told me he was "Totes jelly." which is basically teacher speak for "I'm more excited than our kids get about snow days."), Hillsong United, the Passion Band, LeCrae (and a few other rappers that I don't remember who they were- not so much my style, but man they were impressive!), Chris Tomlin, Crowder (talk about a group that knows how to make an enterance!)... so much good music, and an even better time of fellowship and worship. If you were there and didn't feel the Spirit moving, you weren't there for the right reasons.

Every year, they ask the college students to work together to complete some type of service. This year, we donated money towards building a NICU hospital in Syria. It was supposed to be just under $600,000 to get it built, but here's how you know that God does amazing things through young people...

Basically, I think it will be mine and Tim's plan to return as long as we have students that want to make the trip. From the promo stuff we saw for next year, we think Francis Chan is going to be there... and I would love to get to hear him in person.

I know I was a slacker to not post pictures tonight, but here's a link to the Passion Insta. I'll post mine Friday for my favs! :) Have a good rest of the week! Only two more days!