Finding My Way in San Jose

So, I arrived in warm, sunny San Jose around 10am for
the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA)and hit the ground running. After boarding a Royal Coach full of Presbynerds like myself (two of whom I met on the plane from Seattle -- Jim from Bellevue and Jesse from Silverdale), I headed to my surprisingly hip hotel. Then, I moved on to the San Jose Convention Center to embark on a full week of church meeting goodness. After registering for everything, I ran into a number of folks I knew, including my friend Valerie Small who helped me figure out which way was up.
Brenton Thompson, my fellow TSAD (Theological Seminary Advisory Delegate) from McCormick attended our orientation and cruised the offerings in the large (but not too daunting) Exhibition Hall, where we collected a number of interesting but surely useful items, the most interesting of which can be seen below...

I also met some Presbyterians that don't look like your typical Presbyterian. Here's a shoutout to Iyana from Spellman College which, incidentally, was the college in that show from back in the day "A Different World."

So, what the heck am I doing here? Well, I've been chosen, along with Brenton, to give a theological student voice to the assembly deliberations here. We've both been assigned committees, Brenton's being Christian Education and mine being the Form of Government revision overview. I look forward to attending my committee's meetings, as there will surely be a variety of opinions on this new document that attempts to slim down the church's Book of Order as a way of allowing more freedom of Presbyterian Churches to govern themselves as is suitable to their context. This committee, apparently is on the top ten issues identified by the Stated Clerk of the PC(USA) for this GA.

I've also encountered the Moderatorial race fray! People get way into it and it was interesting to see how the crowds of constituents were divided up according to the moderator candidate they supported. Of course, mom Sarah Reyes was gonna support her baby boy Bruce all the way.

So far, it's been a great start! I've seen so many people just today: Mary Paik & Dwight Morita (on a stopoff before heading for Sweden), Irene Pak, Hardy Kim, Joe Genau, Christine Vogel and, of course, my two MTS compadres below: Andy Sonneborn (in his hip GA smock) and Brenton. With company like this, how can I go wrong?