Friday night there were challenge questions presented by Troy Phelps. Afterwards, we were led in songs by a small group and then had delicious desserts brought in by volunteers!

The morning seminars started at 10:30. Brett Diggins spoke on doing justly and explained what justice is. He spoke on how sometimes sacrifice is required to do what is right and pointed out how we can not truly do justly without knowing God’s law. Matt and Kristin Hernandez spoke on loving mercy and gave personal examples. A key point from their presentation was that sometimes mercy is all it takes for someone to change. Corbin Rose spoke on walking humbly with God. He explained what humility is. Humility is a paradox, not pair of ducks, between believing we are everything and believing we are nothing.

Before services we had lunch and fellowship. There were two split sermons at services. The first one was given by Scott Delamater, an elder serving in the Cincinnati East congregation. Mr. Delamater focused on the verbs from Micah 6:8—the actions God wants us to do. Kevin Kenady from Bowling Green, Kentucky, gave the second split sermon and used the analogy of how life is like a canoe trip. Throughout the sermon he gave stories about canoe trips and in the end pointed everyone back to Micah 6:8.

After services we had time to fellowship and eat dinner before the evening’s activities. At 8 p.m. we started playing Fear Factor, with Jason Nitzberg being the host. He, with the help of Julie Waterhouse and Emily Gunn, came up with a number of challenges for the contestants. Some people ate grasshoppers! Others ate baby food flavored like chicken noodle soup or macaroni and cheese. We also had six three-inch, hissing cockroaches that people had to pick up and move from one container to another. After Fear Factor we had card games, board games and corn hole. 

Sunday morning we broke up into groups and did service projects in the community or helped serve members from the Cincinnati East congregation.

The closing seminar was presented by Jamie and Kayleen Schreiber. They presented a short film titled Paper, talking about the job requirements of being a Christian, taken from Micah 6:8 (you can find the video at www.ucg.org/ucg-films/ucg-short-film/paper). After the film they asked questions to help us reflect on the weekend and asked us to come up with some short-term and long-term goals that we want to accomplish. Afterwards, Steve Myers gave closing comments about the weekend and talked about putting everything we learned from the weekend into action.

It was a fast-paced, exciting weekend! This Living 1835 young adult weekend was one for the books! “Desire what the Lord requires!”