By: Rebecka McAleer

Welcome back, readers! Today I’m being boring, sitting in the office working on some mass duplication. But never fear!—I have some fun stories for you nonetheless! After leaving the South Georgia Annual Conference, there was one last annual conference on my list for this summer: Kentucky. The Kentucky Annual Conference is held in Covington, Ken., which is about ten feet from Cincinnati, Ohio. Ratchet, Sully, Ginger and I drove to Kentucky on a Thursday, set up our equipment on Friday, and had the weekend to play around in Covington before the event started on Monday. We spent most of our time in the riverside town of Newport, which resides between Covington and Cincinnati. We went to the movies and to the bookstore, and we discovered the best brick oven pizza joint in the world. If you’re ever up that way, look for Strong’s Brick Oven Pizzeria. The dessert pizzas—featuring white chocolate and Nutella—are especially good.

When the rest of the crew arrived on Monday, we jumped right into conference time. We had a main stage for business and a band stage for music, which is more than most annual conferences have. There were four screens, two inside screens for graphics and two outside screens for live camera feed. As usual, Ratchet was switching, I was graphics, Ginger was down front camera, and Sully ran the two main cameras. We also had a couple other buddies, Flame and Shang, show up to help us with audio. Flame ran the large soundboard while Shang sat up front with Ginger and listened to make sure that the stage monitors were working properly. Stage monitors are just speakers that face the performer or stage rather than the audience, so the people on stage can hear themselves. Kentucky is the only annual conference that pays us to have a person listening to monitors.

Kentucky was crazy but very fun. The morning devotional praise band, in particular, were very pleasant to work with, as it was clear that they knew how to give graphics signals. Most praise bands just assume that you know all of the words and the order they go in, and ask you to follow them. With just a few simple signals, a band’s front-man can stay in contact with the graphics team to make sure that the graphics and music are in sync. It’s always nice to run into people who know those signals.

After we came home from Kentucky, driving through thunderstorms left-and-right, we all spent a week working in the office together. The annual conference run was over, and it was time to get started on Part II of our standard summer: FCA camps.

FCA, for those who don’t know, stands for Fellowship of Christian Athletes. They hold athletic camps every summer, and many of them hire GNTV to do their lights and sound and to create daily highlight videos of the campers in action. Shang, Abu, and I were sent to Black Mountain, N.C., with another fun employee (let’s call him Wash) to run Coaches Camp. Most FCA camps are for high school or college FCA groups, but Coaches camp is special. Coaches from all over the country come to Black Mountain, and they bring their families. These are big-league coaches. This year we had coach representatives from the Minnesota Vikings and the Auburn Tigers, among others.

During the day, the men would form small groups called “huddles” and compete in softball and volleyball. The women were also in huddles, and they competed in volleyball plus doing team exercises and yoga. The children played games and did arts and crafts—I even got to help out with the Tie-Dye Shirt Day! Shang and I filmed the competitions during the day, and then Abu and Wash edited the film into highlight videos. We then provided camera, graphics and sound for morning and evening worship. Past that, it was practically a vacation.

The best part of our trip—and of the summer so far—was when we got to go Whitewater Rafting with the group from Black Mountain. They were kind enough to offer us the opportunity, and we took it without hesitation. After morning worship on Wednesday, we grabbed boxed lunches and jumped on a bus to the Nantahala Outdoor Center. From there, we took another bus down to the French Broad River. Our raft guide’s name was Rainwater (no joke, I didn’t make that codename up!), and he absolutely loved the fact that we were the camera crew. Wash even rafted down the river with a GoPro camera strapped to his helmet!

After the rafting, the rest of the week was fun but not exciting. We finished up and drove home on Friday. That brings us to today! Today, Prism and I are in the office making duplications from the Florida Annual Conference. We’re hoping to get them in the mail this afternoon, so I’ve got to go. Next up on my schedule is Pittsburgh, Penn., and Epworth by the Sea on St. Simons Island, Ga. Stay tuned!