The Smiths and the McKinzies attended the Global Missions Conference July 20-23 at the Arlington Convention Center in Arlington, TX. For those who don’t know, the conference was organized and sponsored by the Missions Resource Network in order to promote God’s mission among local churches. There were attendees from many congregations throughout the country, as well as representatives of organizations and works associated with missions. A great variety of classes on missions related subjects were offered, and regular plenary sessions brought everyone together for singing and keynote addresses. The conference was both encouraging and challenging. It is a hopeful sign of better communication and greater cooperation in missions among churches. Overall, the challenge is that we as a fellowship of churches do missions not simply more than we have before but better than we have before. With God’s blessing, we will. The next GMC is planned for 2008.

Team Arequipa had a booth reserved in the exhibit hall where we offered information about the team. Aside from our large tri-fold board featuring pictures, short bios, our vision and missions statements, and information about Arequipa, we also had brochures to hand out and a sign-up sheet for this newsletter. Hello to our new subscribers! Our intention was to get the team name out among prospective supporting churches. There were few mission teams represented among the booths, but our first impression was that there was not a great deal of interest on the part of passers-by. Nonetheless, we have heard that at least one church learned of the team as a result of our exhibit. Whatever the result, it made us feel “official” to be in that setting, brochures and all. We were glad to be there, and we pray that GMC will grow in future years.