I feel so smart!!!

Well, after very little sleep all weekend and a nice long nap this afternoon, I'm ready to tell my tale. It was a great weekend. First of all, I've been going to these events for so long that I know alot of the event staff and other youth leaders and kids and seeing them here each year is like a family reunion of sorts.(lots of hugging. Not unlike a ringer get to-gether) A couple of guys that were in the youth group (now almost done with college) came out for the day. Had dinner Saturday night with my two good friends who live right her in Rockford, but with our busy lives and so on, it gets hard to see them very often. It was nice to visit and get re-aquainted with them. And my trek....was......fantastic. Oh my gosh..I just feel so good about it. Thank you all who were praying for me. It worked!!! I had some other prayers for me as well right before the treks were to begin. I was really nervous and scared about the whole thing right up until I started. 10 minutes before the trek was to start I was still trying to decide which clips to use and all that. I had the LOTR Trivial pursuit game set up in the room and as kids and adults started coming in, we played a round of the game. It was a fun way to stay on topic while people were still ariving. Well, the chairs in the room began to fill up and people started sitting on the floor. And still they came. The room I was assigned to was a meeting room in the hotel. It had a big conference table in the middle of the room, (which was too bad because it meant there wasn't as much space in the room) I'm guessing there ended up being about 50-60 people in the room and they were packed wall to wall. Still a bit nervous but glad to see people were interested in the topic, I began. I started each session the same way even though the topic was slightly different. I started by reading Tolkien's quote from the forward of "Fellowship" about how he dislikes allegory. I made it very clear up front that I was not trying to say that Tolkien himself "meant" any of the things I was going to be talking about, except in the way that he was a Christian himself and his Christianity came though in his writing. Then I had some LOTR trading card boxes that I had filled with Andes Mints. I passed them around and offered one to every person there. I said this was a symbol of what this trek was all about. That LOTR was full of little "goodies" if you just look, but that it should in no way replace the real "meal" found in the scripture. With those two intro's I would then show a clip or read a section of the book and start the talk. The first session was all about finding ourselves in the characters of LOTR, the second about finding Christ and the third about redemption, hope and mercy in LOTR. It actually became hard sometimes to keep the conversations in the topic. Sometimes folks would start getting into something that really belonged in one of the other sessions and I would have to say..."ah...that's for the next session" There was some good participation and no one seemed bored. I had some new thoughts, some things I hadn't thought of before and some new insights from the kids and the adults. After the sessions, I would usually have one or two adults or kids come up to me and tell me how much they enjoyed it and sometimes offer suggestions or further insights. I even had one lady from a church ask if I would be interested in giving this talk at their church sometime? I gave her my e-mail addy so we'll see what happens with that. I had many unsolicited compliments including the guy in charge of the whole event who said he had heard that my trek "rocked" He was approached by and adult leader who said it was really good ::squeeee::I was so relieved and pleased and proud of myself when it was all over. And I had a really good feeling of accomplishment and in a way validation. Some of you may know about some of my past "issues" with our youth leader over the whole LOTR thing (too much to explain now). It was really cool to be able to look at him and say (not in words, but just with a look) "See, all my time reading the books and going to the movies and talking online with people has paid off! and I have not traded my faith for my love of LOTR"