At long last I’ve made it to Texas. I’m not quite sure why, but I’ve always wanted to visit Texas and have long said that I’d go the first time I got invited. That invitation came a few months ago in the form of a request to blog the True Woman Conference down here in Fort Worth. When they mentioned that Aileen should come with me, it was a done deal. So here we are. We’ve left the kids with my in-laws and have traveled down to Texas. (Now that I’ve made it to Texas, the state I most want to visit is Alaska. Or Oregon. I’m actually half convinced that Oregon is a fictional place; we all talk about it, but no one has ever bothered to go there to see if it actually exists. I contend that it does not.)

My first impression, as we drove out of the airport and headed toward Fort Worth was, “This looks like Orlando but without the swamps.” They say there are hills in some parts of Texas, but they sure aren’t anywhere near here. I think Fort Worth is probably not the best indicator of what Texas is all about. Nevertheless, it’s the only part of the state I’ll be able to see during this trip, so it’s all I’ve got to go on. So far the only cattle I’ve seen were mounted on the wall of a restaurant and the only cowboy hats were affixed to a sculpture hanging from the ceiling of the convention center.

My second impression came when Aileen and I went looking for dinner. We wandered for a while and eventually found ourselves at a barbecue place. The prices are ridiculously low and the portions ridiculously large. I suppose we are accustomed to Toronto where you pay twice as much money for half as much food. If that food tastes 2 times better or is twice as nutritious, I think it all evens out, right? But the food we had for dinner was plenty good (at least as much of it as we could consume. Neither one of us got through more than about 2/3 of it and even then we were waddling away).

The rest of my impressions will have to wait. Let me tell you a little bit about the conference.

First off, why am I here? There is more to it than the mere fact that I wanted to check out Texas. The truth is that I’m a big fan of the True Woman organization. I was at their 2008 conference and was really impressed with the ministry and the people behind it. Since then my respect has grown even more as I’ve watched them from afar. So I wanted to have another opportunity to take a look at it and tell you what i see. That’s what I hope to do over the next two days.

By way of context, True Woman is a conference put on by Revive Our Hearts, the teaching ministry of Nancy Leigh DeMoss. As the more discerning among you may have deduced by this time, it is a conference geared toward women. Therefore I am not the typical attendee here. Men are outnumbered here several hundred to one. Yet men play a critical role, something I’ll talk about a little bit more tomorrow.

And finally, a word about the format of these blogs. I will not be doing session-by-session, word-by-word liveblogging here. Instead, I think I’ll go looking for stories and points of interest. There are lots of other people blogging, so I’ll leave them to do the session summaries (You can find some of those other bloggers here). I’ll go looking for other points of interest.

Speaking of points of interest, Aileen and I came across a really, really good chocolate store here in downtown Fort Worth. Head to 4th and Main and look for Schakolad Chocolate Factory. Be sure to check out the mint truffles. They’re worth writing home about.

I’ll be back online tomorrow…