Church of God Convention, April 11-15th, 2007

I only attended the last 2 days, which was plenty to get a good taste of what happens there. There are 4-5 meetings or services a day, from the 6am prayer meeting daily, to the evening service at 7pm, that went until 9-10 pm. There were breaks for meals, they provided breakfast and lunch, free of charge. It is a tremendous undertaking for a church, the majority of the work seeming to be the meals, which ladies from other churches did help with.

Here I am with sweet Tamika, Kiera's daughter. She was so good for all the sitting we did!

Here is the choral group from the Helene COG, minus Mr Rowlands, who made it in just in time to sing Sunday morning.

Front row from left: Aileen, Marian, Zula, Bonnalee, Liolyn.

Back row: Amalia, Pastor Teddy

It is quite an honor to get chosen to sing at the convention, so they get matching "suits" for the show. Even Miss Liolyn said it's "much about the clothes you wear", people bring a different outfit for almost every service and meeting. I didn't have enough, so had to buy a new skirt/shirt!

Here they are, up singing their hearts out on Sunday morning. They did a great job with Amalia leading the choir. You can just see Aileen peeking over Amalia's right shoulder, but Mr Rowlings is directly behind Miss Liolyn on the left side.

A few of the ladies and kids who I attended the event with:

Henry, Marian, Kiari (Marion's youngest) Marixa (Marian's sister & Henry's Mom), Tamika, and Kiera. (Henry lives on Roatan with Miss Liolyn so that Marixa can work more. Its been that way since shortly after his birth. Not an unusual arrangement for many of the kids)

The kids were sure better behaved than I can imagine may American kids being at something like this!

Here were my hostesses for the weekend, Miss Liolyn and her sister, who's house we stayed at. She had AC in her bedroom, which is where she spends 90% of her time since she lost her legs to diabetes. She is so grateful and gracious, and made me feel quite welcome. It was just a difficult night because they kept waking up every hour or so to talk! Then dear Miss Lili woke me up at 4:30 to ask what time it was, then said "oh, good, then we can lay back down for another 1/2 hour! Ug, it was good to get home and sleep!