Yesterday our entire team woke up at 3am and left at 4 for San Diego to volunteer at the Acquire the Fire conference. I'll admit we were in a bad mood on the way down, on account of lack of sleep. (I slept for a few minutes in the truck while they went to Starbucks, and became irrationally angry upon being woken up) But upon arriving and being given our official volunteer t-shirts, we perked up. And they gave us coffee. And donuts.
Three of us had signed up for working merchandise (which is odd, because normally I get on a bandbox about all the stuff that makes Christianity a billion dollar business - but the merchandising wasn't out of hand, and there were other booths like Gospel for Asia and ATF's academy, so I'll abstain). Aaron went to the conference's praise and worship band's booth, and Julie and I worked for Thousand Foot Krutch. The rest of the team worked as ushers and security inside the event.
It was a great day. I didn't see much of the conference, only one skit and the first song TFK sang (from their latest album Phenomenon). But I got to sit in the sun with Jules and Jared (who ran the TFK booth) and Aaron, who made his way to ours when his wasn't busy. The only bad part of the conference for us was two other volunteers asking us to "watch theirs for them." Well, they were gone for a long time, and some ATF staff told us we needed to watch the merchandise while they tracked them down. Then, the seminar let out and we were left trying to tell people that no, we couldn't take their money and please try the next booth over. And it turned out that Aaron had been diverting his customers to me. That was stressful. But ATF staff took over, and I went back to my own booth and sold temporary tattoos, CD's and t-shirts.
The conference ended at 9:30, and Jared gave the three of us our own TFK t-shirts for helping him out. And we drove home. Exhausted.
The most exciting thing to come out of the conference was Jessica getting the call to go on a mission trip this summer. She'd been struggling with where to go, and housing in Portland had kept falling through. Now she knows why.
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