Besides the fact that two of our children were born in March, I also love Missions Conference. We host it every year, the first week in March, and it fills our little corner of the world with people from lots of cities, states, and nations. Of course, that is kind of what our community looks like most of the time. But, I digress. Here are some of my favorite things about this week:

Felicity and the Children’s Choir leading worship one night. (if you click on the picture it gets bigger.) The blur on Felicity’s left is her son, Jesse, singing on the mic. (also, Dan’s son, of course. He was on keyboard and I swear I didn’t cut him out of the picture on purpose.)

Translators: I love that we have so many people from other nations living in our community and being part of our church. The three pictured here represent the Middle East, South America, and Eastern Europe.

I love that we can introduce the children of our church to real-life heroes like these pastors from the Philippine Islands.

And I love that our children care. The entire elementary school has been waging a Penny War for two months, seeing who can collect the most pennies for a final mission offering Wednesday night. One year they collected enough to dig a well and install a pump for a village in India.

In the end, I love Missions Conference because it makes the world look small and God look big. As Felicity pointed out when the children’s choir sang, it is just a tiny glimpse of that day when every nation, tribe, tongue, and generation will worship together around the throne. World without end. Amen.