This afternoon, Lisa Cotter reminded up that we live in a time when dating is really confusing. It is extremely difficult to navigate the dating world: there are no norms to dating anymore, and because of technology, as we scroll through our phones, we feel as if we’re connecting with someone, but in reality, we’re not. In order to connect with someone, you need that face to face interaction and we cannot get that through a screen. While texting is a wonderful and convenient thing, unfortunately it doesn’t let us see another’s emotion. We find it difficult to interpret what the other is saying and it can get confusing, so Lisa reminded us that “texting is for information, not emotion.”

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Nic Frank spoke to us this afternoon about families and the impact that we can have on our own family. He began by making a comparison to Canada’s own All Dressed Ruffles. If you took out any of the flavors, these chips wouldn’t be the same. Something would be missing. The same can be said for our families. If we took away any of its members, they would be changed. Something would be missing.

Everyone’s family is different, but regardless of the family you come from, our hearts long for family. We were brought into this world through family and they are all around us. That being said, it is easy to fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to the families we see on TV shows and social media. It can be easy to begin asking ourselves “Is this as good as it gets? Could it be better?” Additionally, some families have been taken down a path that no one intended. The path of divorce, addiction and other hurts can be devastating.

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Dan and Julie Mohan are volunteering at this weekend’s conference as part of the production team. Dan is our Live Stream Engineer and Julie is the Assistant Producer of this weekend’s conference.

As a senior at Chaminade, Dan attended the very first SteubySTL conference in 1999 at Marquette High School and the next one in 2000 at SLUH as a volunteer. Fourteen years later he reconnected with an old friend from his youth group, Denny Handley, and in 2015 he began his current role as the Livestream Production Engineer.

Though Julie never attended as a teen participant, this is her 4th year volunteering. In addition to her role this year, she has served as a chaperone and has been a spotlight operator.

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The challenge this weekend is to make that ‘Amen’ we always say mean something. Brian challenged our attendees to look at all of the passion we have inside us this weekend and imagine if we took that to prayer. For many of us we’ve only scratched the surface of all God can do with us. The enemy wants you to be silent and doesn’t want you to do anything. 

We are taught in this society that being a man of God is simply not good enough. We are afraid of people “bullying” us and are intimidated. We are called this weekend to stand up and be the man God wants us to be. However, we need people around us to give us strength and hold us accountable. 

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