Student Leadership University

Busyness has kept me from adding to the blog lately, but it’s been a good kind of busyness. I spent all last week mentoring high school students at the Student Leadership University conference on faith and politics here in D.C. I had 50 kids and their chaperones assigned to me for the times we were out on buses traveling around the city, so it was pretty hectic and trying. Not surprisingly, the chaperones were the most trouble of anyone, ha. While the students got to hear some really famous and intriguing speakers, the highlight was getting to spend quality one-on-one time with them and finding out where they are in their spiritual journey and try to share with them about taking your faith and being an effective leader in politics, school, whatever. Or maybe the greatest part about it was that the nine other college staff and I got to wear walkie talkies with the wire running up our shirts and into our ear and a microphone pinned to our shirt sleeve, of course wearing suits so we look like our own version of the secret service.

I had some great conversations with a guy from South Carolina who is souled out to be used by God in the mission field as a pilot. He’s 17 and already got his license to fly solo and has a huge heart for the northern region of Brazil. Of course I taught him “You are very beautiful” in Portuguese so he could make some lady friends when he gets down there full time in a few years. There was another kid from Texas who wants to go into the Marines and was so hungry to know how to have a Biblical mindset when approaching the main issues of the world and how to be used for the kingdom…of course is primary goal right now is to win the soccer state championship. About 25 kids from the Middle East, many of whom were Muslim, came over free to SLU and they got to learn that Christianity is not what’s portrayed in their theaters by American movies. They got to see what Christian leaders stand for and how they stand out in the culture. Christians are different and should be different than others…Jesus was a radical in his day and definitely stood out. Anyways, too many stories to tell but it was one of my most fun weeks since I’ve been in D.C., despite getting next to no sleep for seven days. And, I finally got to spend some time with Dr. Richard Land, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.