Head of the Year 5770

The Jewish year 5770 started this last Friday, and our church had a big conference this weekend celebrating the Head of the Year. We met on our new land, and because it's just a vacant 31 acre patch, we had to create the entire facility from the ground up. We had a huge tent that seats 2000 put up, and tents for the bookstore and concessions.

The week before the conference began, it started to rain. It rained all week, and the land was mostly mud. We had gravel trucks bringing rock for roads, but the parking area was a muddy mess. So, on Monday we scrambled around and found busses and vans to shuttle the 2000 guests from parking lots nearby. At the beginning of last year, 5769, we learned that one of the meanings of the year had to do with dealing with mud and mire. So....we hadn't had any yet this year--I guess we needed to do that before we moved on the next one.

Lisa and I are in charge of orchestrating concessions for the conferences, so we've been very busy for the last few weeks. We had water delivered, ice delivered, and found some catering trucks to come in and sell breakfast and lunch. My favorite was Karla's Catering, who brought in a smoker and made grilled chicken, fajitas, tacos and burritos. It was good. We also had three van loads of food to sell. We've gotten good at making sure we have enough coffee available, so that went smoothly, and the breaks were good for business.

The amount of work that went into the event was crazy, and it took lots of people to pull it off. But we were able to provide true hospitality to the visitors, and that was worth it.

I spent most the time that I was there in the concessions tent, but I did get to attend the First Fruits service on Saturday night, and William called me to come in and take communion this morning.

I thought it would be fun to include a video and some photos to share the flavor.