The Why Jesus? 2016 conference is now history. In the photo above we are singing Psalm 67 composed by Wendell Glick. This piece was commissioned by Oasis especially for this conference.
"God, be merciful unto us, and cause His face to shine upon us.
That thy way may be known upon the earth."
The parts are doubled in octaves; thus the soprano ones are singing with the tenor ones, soprano twos with tenor twos, alto ones with bass ones, and alto twos with bass twos. That explains our unique standing organization -- I hope.
And, to give a little perspective, that is Oasis up there under the "Cross" sign.
As we walked around between sessions, people often stopped us and told us how much they enjoyed us being there. Then, several of them asked about why we had different colors and styles of coverings. I am always happy to explain that although we are all Anabaptists and believe in the women's prayer covering according to I Corinthians 11, that we do attend different churches, and that is why we have different coverings. And no one has ever asked me if they could touch my covering before, but it happened this weekend. (And yes, I let them.)
We had our own little room backstage with every singer's dream:
our own refrigerator and cases of bottled water.
And, Jeff got to shake Ravi's hand. (This was the only picture I was able to get.) At first, this was funny because ever since we were asked if we were interested in singing at this conference almost three years ago, Jeff's reply has always been, "I'm going to see Ravi!" Well, he did. But, after we heard Ravi speak, we were more amazed at how this gentle man pointed everything back to Jesus. That was a blessing.