Women of Faith

Well, it certainly is a weekend not soon forgotten.

Myself and 5 other ladies from the church went in to Portland for what we thought would be a conference filled with laughter and reminders from God's word, great worship and fellowship.

We received all that, plus a little more.

Satan tried, but was not successful, at stopping God's work through this conference. We arrived at the Rose Garden about 6:15, went inside, found something to eat and found our seats. As we were eating we noticed that the venue seemed surprisingly empty. There were a few thousand people milling around but definitely not the numbers we expected to see. One whole section was completely empty. We wandered around on the concourse and noticed yellow caution tape in one area but really didn't think too much of it. Just found it odd that we couldn't walk through there. So we went back in and found our seats because it was getting close to 7:00, time for the show to start.

7 comes and goes, 7:15 comes and goes. Finally about 7:25 we see a large group of ladies across the arena finding their seats and we think, "Huh, I wonder why they weren't letting them in before"

Then Mary Graham (President of Women of Faith) comes on stage and announces that the Arena Staff have requested that Friday night's events be canceled due to an incident and we need to quickly but safely evacuate the building. So the Saturday portion was extended by adding an hour in the morning (Seriously? They're starting at 8AM?) And it will go until 5 PM instead if 3. So I'm not really thinking much about what is happening. My first thought was, "But I have all this stuff I need to do when I get home for Sunday. If we don't get done until 5 we aren't going to get home much before 8. Uggghhhhhhh!)

So anyway, we ask a few people on the way out if they know what is going on but everyone is clueless. Outside I see the police vehicles and one of them has the black box thingy behind it so I figure it must have been a bomb scare. But I kept that thought to myself for the time being. We arrived at our hotel about 8:30 and found Breaking news on one of the local channels (Thank you FOX News for having a newscast at such obscure times:)

That is when we learned that in fact there was a bomb scare, a suspicious package found in a restroom around 6 PM. That explained the yellow caution tape. Had we arrived just a few minutes later we would have been locked "out" instead of "in".

But the Lord blessed our time together. Since we had unexpected time waiting around before the conference I found my way to the book table and purchased a book called "Laugh Out Loud" So as we sat around our hotel room we took turns reading stories from the book and laughing out loud!

Saturday was a long day with Friday Night's events added on, but it was good. I particularly enjoyed Lisa Welchel, I have always felt that I can relate to her story and as she shared about her "Scrapbooking Moment" I thought "Oh, been there done that" Putting the scrapbook page slightly ahead of concern for the injured person involved. Oops:)

I think all the ladies had a great time. We will probably take a group next year and will add to our prayers "No Bomb Threats, please!"