On Friday, we spent most of the day just hanging out and getting settled in. That evening, they had the opening day award ceremony, and I was one of the three people that carried our banner. After the award ceremony, Will (our new Youth Minister,) Jacob, and I all helped Adam with his speech. We helped him to go over it some more and get more comfortable with it, and we gave him some pointers. He was doing a lot better with his speech after that night.
I had to do be ready to do my speech at 8:00am on Saturday, and I had a lot of trouble getting to sleep on Friday night. The college-level speeches were in the same room with the K-2 grade speeches and we were last, so I was able to go over my speech one more time before I had to do it. There was only one other person doing a speech at the college level, so it was between him and me. When it came time for the college speeches, there were only about six people in the audience. He did really well, but Don thought that I was going to get first place.
After all the morning competitions, we went to lunch at Olive Garden. We had about a 30-45 minute wait to be seated, so we sat outside and sang praises to God while we were waiting. It was really cool! Everybody who was leaving and going to Olive Garden heard us singing religious songs and many seeds were planted. That was my favorite part of the entire weekend.
They had singing Saturday evening before the Saturday night award ceremony in a hallway in the hotel, so that the people in the hotel could hear us singing. They usually sing in the main lobby near the atrium where it can be heard throughout the hotel, but they probably were told they couldn�t this year. It was still really great. The room was really closed in, so the singing sounded really loud. Acoustically it was a great place to be, but the singing didn�t go far from the hallway, so it didn�t reach as many people as it would have in the main lobby.
I got first place for my speech. Even though there wasn�t much competition at my level, he was really good, so it was close between us two.
We stayed for the worship service, and Justin and I volunteered to help with the Lord�s Supper. They had the best of the winner�s circle speeches (which are last year�s winners) for the sermon. We got back to our church around 11:00am, before the services had let out. This was a fun and relaxing weekend. I had a lot of fun swimming, playing basketball, playing Ping-Pong, and fellowshipping with other Christians
