The day started, for me, with a service project.  I was in the Habitat for Humanity group and started out the day building the landing for the stairs into the basement in a Habitat for Humanity house.  I would shudder to think how my sons the construction workers would feel about their mom  and three (count 'em, three) other people taking almost 2 hours to accomplish this.  My guess is it took a LOT of time.  We also hauled a lot of boards from one place to another.  My hammer skills increased significantly during the day.

Business in the first session included resolutions that did not go to committee, the changes to the constitution and bylaws on the ministry, and the report of the Collegium.  While there was a lot of discussion on the changes with regard to the ministry, none of this, in the end, was very controversial.

After that business session I attended the dinner hosted by Local Church Ministries, which fed me a wonderful vegetarian pasta plate, and which gave me a copy of the new Praise Hymnal that has recently been published.  We also sang through it, and friends of ours agreed to sing some of the music with us when we return to our local church.  Waay cool.  It was  a fun, good dinner.

The evening session was comprised of elections, presentation of the budget, or more accurately budgetary boundaries, and presentation of a couple of the least controversial resolutions before the committee.  It was interesting, but everything passed easily, and Geoffrey Black became our new General Minister and President easily and quickly. 

After the plenary we had a beautiful worship, including some moving dance done against dramatically read scripture.  It was very cool.  The whole service was built around the scripture and the song "Spirit of Gentleness."

At the end of it all I signed up for a speakout on behalf of the polity class, which James and I worked up, with some help from Ruth, and which I will do as #1 tomorrow at 8:30.  So I'm gonna go - so that I can work on that instead of this.