Hey awesome readers! It's Emma here, and this past weekend (July 14-16) I attended the Steubenville conferences in Springfield Missouri for the first time.
Kathleen graciously gave me rights to do the Stuebenville blog post since it was my first year going.. so thank you Kathleen!
I also have Kathleen to thank for encouraging me to go. She helped me along the way and I was super thankful for that because this past weekend turned out to be not just one of the greatest faith experiences of my life, but also one of the all time greatest.
This post is going to be pretty long if you couldn't already tell, because I'm excited and want to RANT! Okay? Okay.
So if you have never heard of Steubenville Conferences before you're probably like.. what the heck is this girl on about? You can check out their website here: https://steubenvilleconferences.com/youth/
The conference Kathleen and I went to was at Missouri State University in Springfield Missouri. It was about a 4 hour drive from where we are from, so it was a pretty long car ride (for me at least).
Now I'm gonna get vloggy.
Friday:
I got up bright and early at 5 AM to drop off Sadie at my boyfriends house for the weekend, I'm still very thankful he watched her for me. She can be quite the pain but she's adorable.
We all met at The Shrine at 9:00 AM to carpool. I was in a group with a lot of great people who I got to become close friends with over the weekend which was awesome.
We arrived around 4:00PM on Friday and by then I was exhausted. Or so I thought.
The moment we walked in on Friday night after rushing around from dinner I was already in love. My energy came right back immediately. When we first walked in I had that "Woah, what did I just walk into" moment. Everyone was having so much fun, dancing, singing, the music was amazing, it was like being at an awesome rock concert for Jesus.
After praise and worship and talks from different leader came adoration. Now I'm going to be honest with y'all. I'd never actually been to an adoration where I felt something. I always got distracted and couldn't completely focus. But this was different than any other adoration I had ever been to before.
I don't exactly know how to put it into words, but you could feel Christ's presence in the room, and everything was so quiet and still. Like everything just fell into place, and I just thought in my mind, "Wow, how could anyone not believe in God when you can feel his presence so strongly?"
It was amazing. I wish everyone could experience the feeling.
After that, around 11:30 PM, we had small groups. I wasn't a big fan. Probably because I'm shy, a bit reserved, and I'm not usually open to sharing my feelings with complete strangers.
Saturday:
Bright and early at 6:30, we were ready to start the day. Here's a photo of Kathleen and I getting hype for day 2 at the hotel.
On Saturday we had mass in the morning, which was amazing. They went through all the steps of the mass beforehand just talking about what everything meant for people who weren't Catholic. Even though I am Catholic, I found it interesting and useful to hear a refresher on what everything was for.
Saturday was filled with workshops, singing, and bonding with friends. It was so much fun. One of my favorite workshops I went to was about Social Media. If you know me, you know I'm extremley addicted to social media and usually spend 40% of my day on my phone (not good, I know).
One of the things I remembered from the social media workshop that I wanted to share with you all is this little tip on making yourself a more positive person:
I challenge you all to unfollow every person who posts negative things from Snapchat/Instagram/Twitter (literally all social media sites you use), and for every person you unfollow, follow someone who will be a positive influence.
I've already started doing this and it helps a TON! Seriously, please do it! You'll be so happy you did.
We also went to a workshop just for girls and that was awesome too. Katie, the woman who was leading the talk, was absolutely amazing. She told us all this really amazing story about her writing to her future husband when she was in high school, and later found out that he came to God the same day she wrote the letter. No joke. You can check out her talk here if you'd like.
Saturday night we had another night of adoration, this time even better than the first. I won't go into a ton of detail, but it was honestly just amazing. I don't really have any other words to describe it. I felt like I became even closer to my friends and Christ.
You can also watch the whole Saturday night live stream here, including our
Sunday:
Sunday was sadly the last day. We started off the day with Sunday morning Mass, and more talks from leaders. Pretty much wrapping everything up.
At the end, they asked everyone to stand who would be interested in someday becoming a priest or nun if God was to call them to do that, and it was pretty moving. So many more people than I thought would stood up. Looking around, it made the Catholic church's future look very bright.
Then it was time to leave.. and I guess that's all to say...
Overall, I had an AMAZING weekend. It was moving, life changing, and brought me so much closer to my friends. The things I learned this weekend will help me make big life changes to help me become a better person and a better follower of Christ. I cannot thank everyone enough for the encouragement.
Thanks for reading through all of this! Hopefully there will be another post about 2018 Steubenville from either Kathleen or I next year!
-Emma
