300 believers, 30 baptisms, seven sessions, three days, and one experience unique to each individual that attended. Summit is a youth conference dedicated to pursuing Jesus Christ and finding your identity in him. This year’s Summit took place in Lubbock, Texas and was filled with students from three colleges, San Angelo State, Texas Tech, and New Mexico State University. It was a three day event filled with impactful sessions and powerful speakers.
Among the sessions, my personal favorite was How to Study the Bible by Krystopher Scroggins. Krystopher Scroggins is the group leader for the Chi Alpha (a Christian Organization) in San Angelo State. He began the session by passing out timelines of when each book of the Bible happened and how far apart each book was written. Scroggins placed emphasis on paying attention to the history in order to be able to understand and look for context. He blamed the lack of following this step as a reason why scripture is taken out of context so consistently. He pointed out the fact that the Bible was translated and written by Bible nerds and because of this one of the most popular books that we know of today will never mean to you what it meant to them. Looking at the Bible through this perspective made the process of trying to understand the verses a lot simpler (at least to me). Scroggins used resources like The Blue Letter Bible app and continued to baffle our hungry minds and hearts.
On top of an amazing experience, the drive home which was supposed to be six hours turned into a trip of eight. It all started with my friend’s two front tires not having any traction at all and her ultimately replacing all four tires a day into the conference. Keep in mind that we were there a weekend ; we left Friday and got back Sunday. The Sunday that we were leaving, not even an hour into our return home, we noticed the car feels bumpy and odd. We stopped by the side of the road and see an air bubble on the side of the tire which to us made it look as if the tire wasn’t put on the rim correctly. I am not very car savvy but I do know that wasn’t right and so we got our bags out of the trunk and took out the spare to change the tire.
Luckily, an older man stopped to help us change the tire. He had all the tools we lacked and everything was going okay until he told us our spare was flat. Somehow this man just happened to have an air compressor in the back of his truck! According to him he was on his way from paying a ticket because he parked in a disabled reserved parking spot ( he couldn’t move his left hand). He said that same day he got the ticket he had helped another pair of New Mexicans who also had gotten a flat tire. The people he helped asked to buy his jack but he refused because he felt like he was going to need it again.
Although we couldn’t go over 60 mph on the donut spare tire for over two and a half hours, we got to Roswell safe accompanied by some friends who followed us in case the donut went flat as well. In Roswell we waited two hours at a Walmart where my friend (the owner of the car) bought a new tire. We finally got home at 9:30 p.m. (we left at 1: 30 p.m.) but we got home safe and sound. Girls who I had barely known on the way to Lubbock were now girls who I felt very comfortable with and was grateful I had them with me to share that experience with.However, a series of unfortunate events are always more fun when you get to tell the story afterwards.