Spiritual World Tour

Had a packed and very fruitful weekend, beginning with a Vocational Discernment Conference, held over Thursday (after a full day of class) and Friday evenings and whole day Saturday. Found it very helpful and enjoyed myself immensely, although it was a little tiring. Between the 2 conference facilitators, they have a wealth of experience to share - both are over the age of 60 with more than 5 careers each! The different career tools are very useful for helping others (and myself?) discern their calling.

Then it was followed by an overnight prayer meeting to Pray for the World in College, on Saturday night (not unlike a whole day's work, from 9:00pm - 5:30am!) I found it to be a tremendously spiritually uplifting time. It was very well done and lots of hard work put in preparing for this. The students were very creative in encouraging people to be participative and engaging in prayer. Just to give you an idea, we started the evening focusing on confession and repentance led by one of the students. Part of that session included writing down our areas of struggle in a small piece of paper, and then moving to the center of the chapel, to nail it to a wooden cross – yes, hammers and nails were provided for that. It was a powerful reflection firstly that our sins was what held Him on the cross. We were then reminded that these are burdens that we were never meant to carry on our own shoulders in the first place. That sure set us on the right tone, and was definitely the right place to start – at the foot of the Cross!

We then went on to pray for different continents, then as the night went on, different rooms were assigned for praying for specific nations for 30 minutes slots. Many of the different prayer stations really worked hard to prepare and tried to make it a wholistic prayer experience that involved all your 5 senses! From Powerpoint presentations, maps, flags, music, art and craft items, costumes & clothing, and even food & drinks! There’s nothing like hearing from all these people who are either from those countries or have links to those countries (like worked or lived there before), to listen to their stories and burdens… and not just reading statistics or static news items and trying to pray for them. Indeed it was a spiritual world tour. Something a place like Regent would be able to pull off, with its sizable body of international students. Looking forward to next weekend’s Taste of the World event … it’ll be a cultural and gastronomical world tour!