Hello from St. Louis!

Brrrrr...... It is freeeeeeeeeeezing here! But, even though there is snow on the ground, it doesn't seem as cold as New York was last year. Thats good.

So, we have one full day of Urbana under our belts. Inspirational, uplifting, yes and yes, but there are a couple other things I want to touch on first.

1. This conference of 17,000 people, mostly college students, is full of asians! I mean, shocking amounts of asians! Apparently there are large asian Christian groups and clubs at all the various colleges. Tonight we sat at dinner with a delightful and shy asian college student who goes to Harvard ( a lot of asians are here from Harvard, seriously taking about YouTube kitten videos, seriously) who is majoring in statistics and who ate his entire meal in about 220 seconds...no joke. We were just taking our first bite when he said his goodbyes, and Pete came and sat down, making us feel better about "being too old to be here." He came to Urbana in 1996, and now runs a program called....called....oh dang, I can't remember, but his shirt said "2 Billion, unacceptable" about the 2 billion people on this earth who have never held a bible, have never met a Christian and who don't know Jesus. He was so kind, and asked us a million questions about us before he mentioned that he ran this "little group." Jeez, people here are so other's minded, weird :)

2. So, in review, #1. many asains, and now for #2 let me tell you that this poor city is BLOATED with people, seriously, I think they're a little overwhelmed. I mean, 17,000 people in a small area of a few blocks is insane. There was a line out the door at "Hardy's" (which normal people call carl's junior), and even more people at "St. Louis Bread Co." (which normal people call Panera). But what I love is that we see people going over and above to show kindness, and be friendly to the hotel staff and people who work in this city. We've gotten into it to, trying to remember people's names, and telling them when they doa good job, etc. One hotel worker told an Urbana staff that when everyone came, she felt like it was the first time people "saw" her while working in the hotel business.

But, even though that's good and all, we have learned ALOT of patience waiting in many LONG lines for pretty much anything around here (usually behind a group of asians, haha, ok, maybe just half the time). Luckily, no one's getting all huffy, cause everyone knows your a christian, so you have to put a smile on and work on your patience. No name calling or line jumping, even if you want to. That's what we did tonight while we waited in line for AN HOUR for dinner with all the other 17,000 people. (Urbana provides free dinner to us all, which we thought was awesome, then unawesome half hour into the line, then awesome again after another half hour when we were eating)

3. Asians, waiting, and my last random thing I have to tell you about Urbana is that apparently people found out we were coming, so wanted to drive their big "REPENT OR PERISH" bus down here from Washington, and pass out flyers to, well, repent or perish. We all believe it is most loving to smile, but ignore them. They are trained to engage in long debates, so we just walk on. Others pass out flyers for strange cults, called things like 12 TRIBES "where we share all our possesions, just like the bible wants, etc" but don't provide a bible verse to back up their claim. Well, the 12 tribes would do well in preschool where sharing is BIG!

4. We can see the arch from our hotel window.



YEEEESSSSS we went to amazing seminars, and met life changing people, heard startling facts and statistics ALL that I want to shout from the roof tops, but I'll save it for another day.


We're having a GREAT time though, and wish that everyone we knew was here

Ok, maybe one stat:
Today, 480 Christians were martyred. All while we sat back, drank our coffees and thought about maybe signing up to be greeters or which movie to see. 480 people risking everything to tell others about Jesus, while we sit worried what others might think.