For the past few years I’ve had the honor of being involved with Vision, a student conference on world mission that attracts church youth groups from hours away. The day is jam-packed with three main sessions, a whole slew of breakout seminars, and tons of displays from mission organization representatives. The idea is to help give students (and leaders) a vision for what God is doing in our world and how he might be uniquely equipping each of us to play a part. Many missionaries can point back to Vision as a time when God worked in their lives in a big way to move them towards serving the nations.

This year we were particularly excited for the conference, but we weren’t even sure how to pull it off. Our speaker, Martin Ssempa of Uganda, was supposed to have flown into Philly, but with the snow his flight was re-routed to Detroit. We started making arrangements for a back-up speaker since it was looking more and more like Martin wouldn’t be able to make it at all. But people were praying and cell phones were ringing and a couple of guys from Grove City ended up driving to Detroit to pick him up and then drove to Lancaster through the night to get him here Saturday morning in time for the first of his four messages of the day (not to mention his three messages Sunday). The dude came through big time: he’s funny, dynamic and goodness gracious, he’s got a heart for Jesus. His ministry in Uganda is with a lot of college students, focusing on AIDS prevention through abstinence and faithfulness, and he has a way of firing you up for kingdom work. And, I should note that he’s the former breakdancing champion of Uganda. Martin’s messages from Vision can be downloaded here.

I was the prayer room coordinator this year and the following are some of the photos, including the before (18th century England motif) and after (trendy and atmospheric motif). Special thanks to Dave Kern of LCBC (not to be confused with the soccer player or the sound effects guy or the ranch salesman) and also thanks to all the others who made this thing a success.