General Conference

I went to the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists from Wednesday through yesterday. The GC session happens every five years and this time it was in Altanta, Georgia. Unfortunately, my mom couldn’t come, so dad and I had to go by ourselves.

We left Wednesday morning and arrived that afternoon after meeting my sister, Linda, for lunch on the way.

Here is our hotel. It had two beds, a bathroom, and a TV. And that was pretty much it. Not even an alarm clock or refrigerator.

That’s our hotel sign. It has a pineapple. That’s kind of random. Kind of like the wireless internet, which had a very bad signal in our room, hence why I could only get on the internet at the exhibition hall (more on that to come).

We took MARTA, the mass transit system, from a station near our hotel to the area where the Georgia Dome and Georgia World Congress Center.

Here’s the Georgia Dome, where the meetings were held, Wednesday afternoon when we showed up there. The area in the center, where the stage is, was for delegates (representatives chosen from each division), their families, and retired denominational workers.

When we got there, they were just wrapping up a business session (which most people except delegates don’t go to), and we got to watch a screening of The Adventists, a documentary about the Adventist health care system.

Here’s the Wednesday night meeting! There were probably a dozen musical performances at each meeting, with one or two between practically every speaker and such. But those of us who like music don’t mind. :)

 

Each night (except Friday and Saturday) there were videos from the divisions about what they had been doing over the last five years, with two or three divisions showing their videos every night. My favorite video was probably the Trans-European Division’s, which is (obviously) not the one in this picture.

Thursday morning we went to the exhibition hall, where all the booths from ministries all over the world were. Right at the entrance was the North American Division ministries section. They had an NAD Live stage where presentations were done. This one is an actor portraying Ellen White preaching a sermon that she gave at a pulpit that had been made especially for Ellen because she was so short.

Andrews University, where I will be going next year, had a really good booth. This is a replica of the globe that’s at the entrance of the real college (it’s so good that when I saw it on TV at the beginning of GC I thought they were actually at Andrews!).

Here’s the Adventist Heritage Ministry booth. I’m related to someone in this picture.

Here’s the ADRA booth! I was supposed to meet some online friends here on Thursday night, so they never showed. Oh well. I liked the booth, anyway. And they had stickers!

Here’s Hopey, the Hope Channel mascot!

ADRA started a petition called enditnow to protest violence against women. They had this banner that people could sign. I signed my name. Here’s what my dad signed:

Um… yeah.

Here’s the Adventist World radio’s wall that people could sign. I didn’t, because it was full by the time I got there.

Anyway, for reference, here’s Wednesday night’s meeting:

And here’s church on Sabbath:

Wow.

I have a lot more pictures, which I should have labeled and uploaded by tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’ll tell you all about the FREE STUFF I got at the exhibition hall (where pretty much everyone was handing things out for free).

Here’s the booth of the lovely Sanitarium health food company from Australia. They gave our free food every day. One day I got granola with soy milk, and another I got rice pudding. All delicious!

‘

This is all the free stuff I got. In case you can’t tell from the picture, it’s five bags full of stuff. Most of which is not duplicates. Overall, I got at least 6 writing utensils, three pins, two buttons, a fossilized shark tooth, 16 CDs and DVDs, a bottle of hand sanitizer and a first aid kit, a Russian flag, a bunch of stickers, a fan, volcanic ash, and a whole lot of brochures. And a few free books.

I also got some other things that I had to pay for but at a great discount.

This is a two-book set, each book of which originally cost about $20, but at the ABC sale, both books, together, were $5! I also got an awesome t-shirt at the Spectrum Magazine booth for $6 off the original price:

 

:)

 

Here are some pieces of ash I got for free from the Trans-European Division booth! They came from Eyjafjallajokull, the volcano that erupted recently.

I’ll have some more pictures up later, but that’s enough for now. I need to catch up on the rest of my interwebs!

Later,

Siv