Peace, Love, and Unity

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned a conference I went to before spring break so now that I have some time to write about it I’ll do just that. About a month earlier, my pastor from my church in Indianapolis sent me a facebook message about some opportunities that she thought I might be interested in. It highlighted two opportunities sponsored by the Disciples Peace Fellowship, an organization affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) my own denomination and the denomination affiliated with Transy. One of the opportunities presented is their summer Peace Internship program and a Young Adult Peace conference. I was offered some aid to attend the conference and thought that it looked like fun, so I jumped at the offer.

My next step was to find a friend to go with me since the conference was in Kansas City, neither my parents nor me thought it would be a good idea to make the 9 hour drive by myself. Thankfully, one of my closest friends, Elizabeth, is also a DOC’er (and double PK) and decided to join me on this adventure. Unfortunately for this venture, my car is a manual and so few people know how to drive a standard, so I was on my own for the actually act of driving. The conference started the Thursday night before SB so we had to leave early Thursday, meaning we missed class Thursday and Friday. This meant both Elizabeth and I had to make arrangements to take our test or presentations early, we had to finish the papers and homework that were due at the end of the week. In case you were wondering, yes the week before any kind of break is always busy, and no neither of us slept hardly at all the 3 days leading up to the conference, but the nice thing was that we were able to talk to our professors and they were flexible with everything.

We drove past the Arch in St. Louis, it's one of the only pictures I have from the trip...

The actual conference was an interesting experience, seeing that it was called a conference I was expecting a big crowd but when we got there we were told that everyone was at dinner and we went to meet them (and got lost on our way) and we were met with the 10 other smiling faces of the other people who were there. The small group made for some good discussions and we all knew everyone else that was there by the end of the weekend. We listened to keynotes on peace efforts in communities, took part in some very interesting discussions on the issue we see face us as young people in our society, and Elizabeth and I got lost almost every time we went somewhere new.

Ultimately the group at the conference found ourselves faced with the prospect of actually doing something after a weekend of talking, so we organized ourselves into a group of people seeking to start a national peace movement and the conference was to serve as a catalyst for the creation of a future organization. We did have some fun on top of all the serious stuff, having dinner together and going dancing in Kansas City. It definitely was an adventure and I was met by an experience I wasn’t expecting. I imagine you might hear more about this later, the conference sparked an interest in creating a peace organization on campus but we’ll see about that.

Me and Elizabeth out Dancing

Hope you’re enjoying the spring weather!