Valleyview Baptist Church, PA

We were blessed to be at Valleyview Baptist Church in Northampton, PA for a mission’s conference last week.  Pastor Volker Stoeckmann is on the Board of Directors for Baptist World Mission.  Two of the other missionary families at the conference are our friends and coworkers with BWM also, and the keynote speaker was the Executive Director of BWM – Bud Steadman.

We enjoyed staying with the Trauch family.  My kids especially enjoyed their pets – Sassy the Shih Tzu, Gretchen the red Doberman, and Shack the cat.  The Trauch’s became like grandparents and my kids loved the time we spent in their home.

  

The missionary activity sponsored by the church was an outing to the Crayola Experience factory in Easton, PA.  This was right up my kids’ alley.  We had a good time!    Lunch at Chick-fil-A on the way home was just the icing on the cake!

The kids got to design and color images on these touch screen “tablets”…

…then watch it float across the wall mural!

   
I enjoyed all of the unique crayon names at the giant coloring center, and the twins loved the giant Lite Brite

 
We watched a video and demo of how Crayola makes crayons..

  
Then we explored the system of Locks and dams on the Delaware River and how it fit into PA history.

We enjoyed the setup of the mission’s conference.  The church approached it like a plane departing for the field.  Each missionary had a designated room and we were given 30 minutes to show our DVD presentation, answer questions, and get to the know the people each night.  Every night the “captain” would come over the intercom and tell people to get to their gate for departure.  People got to choose which field to “visit” each night.  It gave us a smaller group to get to know and talk to each evening, and I think people felt more comfortable interacting and asking questions in the small group setting.

We thoroughly enjoyed our week in Pennsylvania!