Destino Winter Conference Highlights

Our student leader at Cal State Long Beach, Daniel, has been gracious enough to share some highlights of how God worked at the Destino Winter Conference.  So, naturally, I have to share this with all of you who help make things like this possible!

Daniel, on right, with our National Director during the commissioning

I wrote these highlights as a “Thank You” note for the donors that supported our LB Destino movement (in so making it possible for many of us to attend the conference), but I find them valuable and thought I’d share them here as well. Here we go…. some of the most memorable highlights of the conference:

• Upon my arrival, I felt the immediate love of some long distance friends I had not seen in months. It’s a great feeling when a sister or brother in Christ waits for you a few thousand miles away. Surely, nothing can unite humans like the love of Christ

• I also met staff and students for the first time who “had heard a lot about me” already. Just like that. They knew what was happening in our campus and our movement. I received compliments and gratitude for our work. This assures me of the NATIONAL commitment Destino staff has. What happens in California, or Texas, or Denver, or anywhere… doesn’t stay there; it goes all over the nation. And it encourages many.

•  Two freshmen students came on the trip and they could not tell me enough just how much they enjoyed the conference. For both of them, this REASSURED their faith. It also made their commitment to Destino much stronger. I asked one of the freshmen to take notes for me (while I spoke). When I read his notes, I smiled. He had written on a top corner “Destino rocks!!!” He had caught the vision. He also expressed his desire of helping leading something, anything next semester.

• The students constantly asked me if we were going to have a Bible study our group discussion/worship at the end of each night. This is encouraging to me because it was now THEM taking the initiative to seek the Lord. I didn’t have to ask them, they asked ME! The joy of seeing that is proof that our Lord is more committed to helping our students grow in their faith than I ever will be. He is that committed.

• I will never forget my friend Rico’s seminar. I love this guy like a brother and I had never [spiritually] seen his story as I saw it in his talk. Because of his tremendous influence, I have committed to become far more vulnerable with some things I have not revealed to almost anyone. I am now confident that I can and must do this. I also will work to create a vulnerable culture in our movement.

• We had late night worship sessions in the lobby. We gathered with students from other campuses. We barely knew each other, but when the point of worship is One, that rarely matters. I still have fond memories of their faces and voices, although I confess, I don’t know all of their names.

• Two young ladies from our movement shared the Gospel on their own for the first time, and it was incredibly encouraging to witness it! As I saw them share the love of God, I realized that sharing His love is not a duty, it’s a liberating honor. Congratulations to both of them!

• I had the honor of speaking in one of the seminars. The talk was titled “How to lead a movement”. I am grateful for two things regarding this talk: 1. Someone trusted me enough to let me influence students and staff from all over the nation 2. Students and staff approached with questions and to let me know they were starting Destino movements in their respective campuses. Joy!

•  I also had the great honor, and humbling experience of commissioning all the students and staff at the end of the conference. The national director of the Destino movement completely surprised me with this. He asked me to commission everyone roughly three hours prior to the end of the conference. Talk about shocked, nervous, and grateful combined! I remember sharing with one of my friends how nervous I was. Her words were reassuring. So I went. I prayed. And the Lord blessed it. Again, I am grateful, extremely grateful that a man of God like our national director would trust a student like me for such a major honor. It shows character, tremendous amount of it. You can be sure that Destino has excellent leadership.

•  Dennis, one of the freshmen, shared a story I will remember for as long as I can. He had given up on God in the last months of high school. His life was on decline. His whole family stopped attending church. Then, through some hard experiences, He felt he had to give it one more try in college. In his words “I had to try it”. He tried Destino and God changed his life through it. He is the freshman that wrote “Destino rocks!!!” in my journal. He is the one that caught the vision, and he is also the one who will take some leadership role next academic year. But that’s not the best part of the story. The best part of the story is that… due to the EVIDENT change in his life… his family took notice. Dennis could not help but tell them “It is God who is doing it!” and so… his WHOLE family is attending church again! Can someone say ‘Glory be to our God!!!’?

There are many more things, among them, I was grateful for the 5 or 6 times my friends sang “Happy Birthday” to me. Indeed, it was my birthday and no gift was a highlight of the weekend. Wait… actually one gift was indeed a highlight – God’s gift of me. On that Saturday night (night of my birthday) – as hundreds of students worshipped their Creator -He allowed me to see a sneak peak of what a generation of surrendered students looks like. And now I want more. And now, WE want more.
So, will we surrender? I will, and if you will too, I promise not to leave you alone.

 P.S. My friend Rico wrote a great post on his happiest moment of the conference. I suggest you read it. 

*see original post and read more of Daniels writing on his blog.