Conferences: the big and small of it

In the past three weeks, I’ve taught at one of the largest and one of the smallest writers conferences around. At the end of September, Ken and I headed to Dallas for the American Christian Fiction Writers annual conference.

This was our 16th year for the conference and I’ve never missed one! It’s a highlight of my year and a wonderful chance to get to visit with dear writer friends. I’m part of the ACFW executive board, which always meets the day before and the day after conference (and again in January) so it’s a long, but fun week.

This year was extra special since our oldest son drove up from Houston and spent a couple of days with us in Dallas. We hadn’t seen Tarl since Christmas, so it was a real treat to have him there and get to introduce him to some of our friends in the publishing world.

Just yesterday, Ken and I returned from teaching at a creative retreat near Mountain View, Missouri, a small gathering (registration is limited to about a dozen) of mostly Missouri teachers and retired teachers who meet at Bunker Hill campgrounds for a long weekend of classes and creative activities, mixed in with enjoying homestyle cooking in the dining hall in the midst of the gorgeous wooded countryside at the edge of the Mark Twain National Forest.

This rustic campground is truly one of the most beautiful spots I know. If I were tasked with designing the streets of Heaven, this is exactly how they would look, with all my dearest family and friends living in cottages on the same pretty street, and in our backyards, the rocky beach of the rambling Jacks Fork River. The only sounds in this place are the gurgling river, the rustle of falling leaves, and the occasional walnut plunking onto the roof of our cabin.

We taught here five years ago and returning this week felt a little like coming home. Bunker Hill is famous (some would say infamous) for being “unplugged”…no phone service for miles, no wifi whatsoever, no phones or televisions in the cabins. We did have electricity and access to a projector so we could use our PowerPoint presentations for teaching, but we were unplugged from the rest of the world all weekend (except for a quick 14-mile trip to a McDonald’s one night to send some important business email and check in with family). For two people who are plugged in pretty much 24/7 it was…well, a little disconcerting, to be honest! At the same time, it was refreshing to not be at the constant beck and call of our devices. And these conferences are such encouragement and refreshment. But oh…it will take us all week to catch up on the hundreds of emails we got behind on while we were gone.