ROAD TRIP!!

This past weekend, 14 people from my church headed down to Kentucky for the weekend. As in, we left Friday morning and got back Sunday night. It was kind of a whirlwind trip. Here are the highlights: 

ARK ENCOUNTER: 



Wow! The ark was huge and I was pretty impressed. Mostly with Noah and not as much with the crew of construction workers that put this one together. I mean, he built (by himself, by hand) what it took a modern construction crew a year to do! Plus it's not like Minnesota where there's snow half the year. It took them a year in Kentucky, with only a little tiny bit of snow here and there. I know this because I watched a time lapse ;)



Here's a perspective picture. The thing is HUGE! I definitely had a lot of fun going inside and touring the ark. I enjoyed seeing how they might have stored all of the animals, and also how their living quarters might have looked. 

CREATION MUSEUM: 

Raptors are my LIFE.

The Creation Musuem (45 minutes from the Ark) was more informative than impressive, and I thoroughly enjoyed going through it and reading up on fossil records, seeing the bug and dino rooms,  and walking through the 7 C's of History.

There was one part of the creation museum that oddly made me super emotional. You know the feeling where your heart feels heavy and your chest constricts? I got that as I walked through the "corruption" C of History. The Fall into Sin. It showed some sins of today and it made me internalize how sinful we all are and how we desperately needed a Savior. Our world is so corrupt. More than that, our hearts, MY heart is corrupt. The heart felt SO heavy as I walked through here, and as I exited this section into a gloriously lit chamber with pictures of God's creation and glorious pictures of the sky, my emotions changed into happiness and thankfulness for God!! He is good :)

CHURCH: 

In lieu of my church stacking operation which would have been a little hard to complete, being that I was in a different state, I enjoyed great fellowship with my road trip companions and attended a Baptist church in Illinois.

I liked it! And I've decided to rate this one as well for several reasons. First, I think it's important to line it up with other churches to get a picture of what I'm looking for and not looking for. Second, I did have a couple of requests and people wondering what I thought about the church.

The sermon at this church was really good. The pastor focused on the Bible the whole way through and it was about loving God. The music was more praise-and-worshippy, than I'm used to, but weirdly so. Usually praise songs are pretty easy to get the melody and even harmonize, but these had some weird melodies and I could just not get the hang of it, so I kept making errors. Mostly they had good words though, although a few were a little weak. I really liked one of them that I had never heard before. I wish I remembered what it was called so I could look it up and post a link to the lyrics here.

At any rate, here's what I'd give this church, using my 3 scores.
Doctrine: 10
Music: 6
At home-ness 7.5

THE FELLOWSHIP: 

So I wasn't 100% a fan of spending all that time in the van, but uncomfortable seats, late nights (ahem, rolling into the hotel at 3am) and boring roads aside, I had fun. We had fun. The girls and I in my van laughed and laughed and laughed. I am coming out of this experience knowing them so much more than I did when we started the trip. 20+ hours of sitting next to someone will do that to you.

Photo Credit: Analisa (The one with the longest arms) ;)

Would I do this trip again? Absolutely.
No questions asked. :)