wow what a week!
i just attended my first hillsong conference and now i never want to miss a year. it was just so so amazing. seriosly there are no words. "mind blowing" is a word ive commonly used to describe how i have felt at the end of each day. and that didnt even come close to expressing how i felt.
each day was amazing. alot of ppl preached out of exodus in reference to leadership - i think ill have to have a read of that book in light of leadership hey. very interesting.
i visited 'jam' which is the youth hillsong conference. man that was AMAZING! 4000-5000 youth praising god and getting convicted. they didnt even trash the joint, i was impressed!
israeal houghton was there. what an amazing worship team he has. and it was so exciting to be able to sing along to such amazing music without having to follow the words...hehe just scream the words out and boogie around. the new hillsong live album is gonna be amazing. we sung 'dance dance dance' alot and to anyone reading this you NEED to buy that cd cos that song gets you dancing, you cant help it! not that dancing like a fool has ever been an issue for me :p but dancing around - carefree just to worship god and to let every movement of your body be a glorification for god - its so liberating and fills you with this joy that ive never experienced b4.
all the speakers were truly amazing. reinhard bonnke was so goood!! and seeing the short clip of his campaigns in africa gob-smacked me! all you could was ppl. everywhere. its amazing the way he reaches the millions. he told a story of how he received a threat from osama bin laden!!! crazy! not just any threat either - a death threat!! you know your doing something right when osama bin laden wants you dead. hhehe. good thing us god wants him alive so much more so the devil hasnt got a chance. *na na nana na*
we also had delirious there. the little concert they put on for us was amazing and the lead singer was so amazed at the crowd - how could you not be amazed at the scene of 30 000 ppl all worshiping god in unity, its enough to take your breathe away thats for sure. and its a sight i NEVER got sick of!
altho the whole conference was amazing, the final session was THE BEST!!!!! the 7:45pm session on friday night was a praise party and annointing service. my ticket was behind the stage - as usual. so as usual i stood in line for a better seat with jon. then when we got seated, i got a call from sam sheedy, saying come down - we have seats saved for you (PRETTY MUCH AT THE FRONT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) so we bolted down and got such amazing seats! the praise and worship started off as usual and then we watched a dvd of 'hillsong memories' showing 20 yrs of hillsong - what a crack up!!! some VERY bad hair styles and outfit selections!
then we had hillsong 'top ten' where we sung a mix of the top ten most impacting hillsong songs over the last 20 years - that was so so cool! and wow all the lights and sound and media was done to COMPLETE excellence!! on the roof at the back of the dome on the last night they projectected "GLORY TO GOD" wow it looked so amazing. oh and i forgot to say they had these dancers at the start, that was cool (but our sunset dancers are better sorry. hahaha) and yeh, then we had the annointing part of the service where EVERYONE in the entire dome - thats like 30 000 ppl got annointed with oil. i got annointed twice. HAHA but i wasnt gonna say anything! the worship played in this was so touching and my tears flowed like a river - goodbye mascara. some ppl just got a dot of oil on the forehead and that was it, but i got blessed, the annointing peeps that i got prayed as well. gee its mindblowing when a stranger speaks stuff into ur life thats SO SO spot on. and THEN to have words in the worship line up perfectly with the things that god is telling you. god shared things with me that made me cry cos i dont want to do them. hha. what a spoilt brat. BUT GOD I DONT WANT TO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but its been great how gods had grace on me and let me grow more happy and accepting with it all.
THEN we had the praise party! and since god knows my hearts desires - i wound up in the mosh pit! THATS RIGHT! I WAS IN A HILLSONG MOSH PIT! aawwww yeah!!!! it was amazing. ive never sweated so much. haha. but it was so great to jump and dance and just offer every last peice of energy i had as a sacrifice of praise to god. its so....urrggh no words. liberating, freeing, uplifting. it was AWESOME. and i cried a little as my younger brother jon - who spent the whole conference hardly muttering a word of praise, or raising his hands to god - mosh, dance, sing and praise god. oh my heart was just beating so fast. it blessed me so much to see him get into praising god. i wanna cry just writing about it. i had prayed and prayed that god would touch him at the conference, i know that he really did.
anyway. i could write on and on and on. but i wanna finish on that high note. im now in brisbane staying with my brother ben, his wife linda and their son joseph. hes so cute. he's 21 months and so so so so cute. im loving spending time with them. so i beta get back to it!
