LTC

For the past 3 years we have gone to Dallas on Easter weekend for the LTC convention. LTC stands for Leadership Training for Christ. It is for 3rd thru 12th graders to go and compete in different activities relating to church and worship that will help them to be future leaders of the church. There are many different activities they can choose from: song leading, chorus, puppets, drama, speech, sign language, Bible bowl, art, scrapbooking... the list goes on. We had around 20 kids participating this year, and had around 50 people with us on our trip. We left Friday morning and didn't get back home until late Saturday night. It was a long, but fabulous 2 days!

We usually bring Austin with us on the trip, even though he is not old enough to participate, but this year we left him with my parents in DeKalb. He had an Easter egg hunt at school Friday morning that he didn't want to miss and he wouldn't have been able to go to that if he had gone with us. But he had a great time with my parents while we were gone. They hid and hunted eggs several times, rode the golf cart, and even locked themselves out of the house once, so it must have been a good time. My mom told me that my dad kissed her before he was leaving the house and when Austin saw this he said, "hey, y'all are married?" Mama said, "yes, we are".  Austin said "well Poppy Loe needs to take off his ring so I can marry you". So sweet. I told him when I saw him Saturday night that he hurts my feelings because I thought he was married to me. He said, "don't worry mom, I still love you the bestest". That's all I needed to hear. :)

All of our activities were held at the Anatole hotel. They have tons of conference rooms, lots of room to hang out in a down time, and a nice big yard for the kids to play in. While the events the kids were participating in were serious, there was plenty of time for fun! 

I had Adison Wright and Emily Anderson in my hotel room this year. They were so good, I could just keep these two for myself. (Except for the fact that SOMEONE squeezed all my toothpaste out and I didn't even notice until I got home!) That's alright though, girls, I still have my paddle! ;-)

This is Brandi McGilton. She is the reason I spent a large part of these 2 days laughing my head off! Love this girl.

Aaron participated in 2 different events this year, puppets and chorus. Last year was his first year to be able to participate and he said, "I'll do puppets, but only one or two lines". Well, he did great with what he was given last year, so this year he was given the main puppet role in their skit. He held his puppet the right way, spoke loudly, and spoke clearly. Really couldn't have been any better. I was so proud of him. We had a pretty big group that participated in chorus this year. They sang 3 different songs, and were judged on several different elements. I was a little worried about Aaron not standing still for all of it because he was on the front row and he has trouble standing still for 1 minute, much less trying it for 8! But he did well so at the end of the day I was not only just a proud momma, I was proud of all of our kids that have spent the last 4 months preparing for this. 

This is the chorus during their performance.

This was Aaron's puppet group walking in the room, ready to perform.

Aaron with his friend, Garrett Brooks.



The book of the Bible that the theme was based on this year was the book of Revelation. It is all about how Jesus is coming back and we need to always live our life in order to be ready for His return. The t-shirts that our group wore on Saturday says "BE READY" in Greek, or at least that's what we were told!