Our family frequently stays in hotels while we travel. The hotel in Somerset, Kentucky, was the most friendly we have ever stayed in. The desk clerk helped us find where we needed to park the bus, let us use the hotel’s dryer when we asked how long the guest laundry dryers took to dry a load, voluntarily got a stack of extra towels when she heard the boys slept on the bus but came in to shower, offered for the boys to sleep on the sofas in the lobby if they were cold on the bus, and wanted us to practice our music in the breakfast room. She made us feel like we were at home.

There were three highlights of the Somerset conference for us. First, a friend of mine, whom I hadn’t seen for nine years, drove two hours to the conference with her husband and two of her sons. What a joy that was for me even though we had very little time to talk to each other. “A friend loveth at all times…” Proverbs 17:17

The second highlight was meeting a family who read about our family’s nursing-home church, and they have begun a church in an assisted-living home. They told us they now have such peace about their church and joy in it.

The third highlight was a man who came to Steve after the conference and talked for quite a while. Steve heard from him the next morning via e-mail, and he shared with Steve that his 51 inch beast (TV) was headed out of their home. “I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes…” (Psalms 101:3) We regularly hear from families several months or years after a conference, and they tell us the impact the conference had on their family – changes the Lord Jesus was leading them to make. However, to have such immediate feedback involving that magnitude of change was a blessing to our hearts.

Speaking about conference feedback, we were just talking in the bus as we drove this morning about how many of our conferences this trip were coordinated by someone who had been to one of our conferences in the past. Seven out of the sixteen conferences on this trip fell into this category.