DBC and the Limo Ride

I woke up late this morning.

Yes, I realize that this is a fairly normal occurrence, but today I was pretty darn late. We were leaving for the service project at 8 a.m., and it was 7:45 a.m.

But I did it. Using the skills I have learned from being a chronic late riser, I made myself semi-presentable (at least for Food and Friends) and ran down to the lobby to meet my group. We headed out - for the last time at this end of the semester - to Food and Friends, where they put us to work in the kitchen, putting together frozen meals of pasta and meatballs. After a quick lunch at our favorite KFC/Taco Bell fast food place, we headed back and packed up a bunch of bags with food. We attempted our 20 questions game, but we had a different set up today, and it was too hard to keep it going.

We returned to the apartments, where I just kind of messed around for a little while - reading, computer, etc. Then I made myself a sandwich and joined Karin in getting dressed for the big event this evening.

This weekend is the CCCU (Christian Council of Colleges and Universities) Presidents Conference, and it is here in Washington, D.C. The main speaker tonight, we found out from Terry, was David Kinnaman, the guy from the Barna Group who wrote the best-selling book, "UnChristian." Terry really encouraged us to go to it, so a bunch of us decided to go for it.

The conference was at the Hyatt Regency right next to the Capitol, and we got all dressed up in our business attire and jumped on the glamorous bus to get to the hotel. Once inside we found the room it was happening in, explained why we were there to the people by the doors, and were directed to a row of seat toward the back.

Just before the session began, we saw President Barry Corey sneak in with his wife, Paula.

After a bit of worship with Noel Tredinnick, from All Souls Church in London, David Kinnaman came up to speak. He was amazing. He's a Biola grad (woot!), and he just presented some very intriguing information about our generation. Most of it I already knew or could have told you anyways, but it was just great the way he presented it. He used Luke 7, the story of the woman with the perfume on Jesus' feet and then a debt parable, to get the point across, and I was just totally blown away.

There were 11 of us that went to this thing - we were only missing 4. After Kinnaman spoke, one of the CCCU board members came up to the stage and did some announcement stuff, and then asked if Terry Mattingly was in the room? Well, he wasn't, but one of the girls that came with us announced, "He's not here, but we're his students!" to the entire room of very important people.

The guy up front asked us to stand. So we stood. And they applauded us. It was kind of awkward. But then everything ended, and Karin, Shanley, and I made a beeline for Dr. Corey and his wife. We talked to Paula for a while, and then DBC came over, and we all talked for a while, and then he wanted to take a picture with us, so we took pictures, and we talked basically until the room was empty.

By this point, all the WJC students with us had started talking to Kinnaman, so we went and joined them, only to get into an extremely extensive and interesting discussion about our generation and how we should be acting in the world. We talked for a really long time, and then he gave us his business card, because apparently he will be back in about a month and might use us for some surveys. Cool!

So we headed out of the hotel, and returned to the bus stop to hop on the bus back to the apartments. It was quite chilly, and the bus was sure taking its sweet time, so we were all just trying to stay warm and not get too bored.

After waiting for about 15 minutes, this big, black stretch limo drove by. The driver kind of stared at us, and I saw him looking, so I waved at him, and he waved back. Friendly sort of guy. 5 minutes later, this same limo drives back around and pulls over right in front of us.

Now, as a disclaimer, there were 11 of us, and 2 of them were guys. So I wasn't really worried about safety stuff.

The guy asked us where we were headed, and we told him the street name. Then he told us to climb in and he would take us there for free. So, we talked to him for about a minute, and then climbed into the limo - all 11 of us, and he drove us back to the apartments entirely free out of his own goodwill. His name was Darryl, and he said that he was just trying to kill time, and so decided to offer us his services.

So I got driven home in a limo =)