This year’s Young People’s Convention was in Green Lake, Wisconsin. The convention is something all of the young people look forward to. It is one of the highlights of summer. The theme for this year was “Lessons from the Life of Joseph.”

Let me start off by mentioning some of the things that I really liked about the convention this year. The facility where we stayed was great. The area where we slept was also very nice. They were a lot like college dorms. And I know serving meals to a family of teenagers can be a big job, but all of the young people would be something else! And yet the hosting place did a great job with the food. The chaperones seemed very friendly and relaxed, which made for good relationships with the conventioneers.

Personally I had fun the entire convention. I can’t really think of a time when I didn’t. But I will only mention some of my favorite parts. First of all, free time. During free time you can do whatever you want. I love this because you can walk somewhere for five minutes and find a group of friends. It’s so much fun. Secondly, there are the team games. Everyone is divided up evenly into groups and placed under a chaperone. Then your team plays all different games. This is always a blast. In my opinion the best games were broomball, human bowling, and the relay races. I also enjoyed our devotions with our chaperone at night. My chaperone was Aaron Lim, who is from Singapore. He lives in Michigan as he is currently going to college for pre-sem. The nightly devotions were always a good way to end the day. So was learning about Aaron and Singapore. Did you know gum is illegal there? Yeah, neither did I until convention.

Now I may be wrong here but I think it’s pretty safe to say that none of the conventioneers got much sleep during the convention. This can make it tough to pay attention during the speeches. But don’t get me wrong, they were still excellent. The theme for the speeches was the theme for the convention: “Lessons from the Life of Joseph.” The ministers talked about how we as God’s people don’t always understand why God does the things that he does. But yet we cannot question him. Joseph’s life was a perfect example of this. The ministers examined all of his life. Joseph often didn’t know God’s purpose in what was happening, yet he never questioned God. And all of it worked out for the good of God and his church! God directed Joseph to his position of power in Egypt to save his own church when famine came. Surely our God is great.

One part of these speeches really struck me. It was something I had never thought of before. It was that sometimes we have to suffer for doing the right thing! When Joseph fled from Potiphar’s wife he was fleeing from adultery. This was definitely the right thing for him to do. But he suffered for it! Potiphar’s wife lied and Joseph was put into prison. And yet he didn’t question God.

The Randolph Church did a great job at hosting the convention. It was such a fun week. I am already excited for next year.