We had plenty of time to get to our next acitivity at the Convention Center so we walked along the shore, passing the aquarium, sighting a departing cruise ship and enjoying the view of the mighty Mississip. Our route included a detour through the Riverwalk Mall to take advantage of its air conditioning. You think once you're inside the Convention Center that you're there but it stretches out for a mile or so so we still had a ways to go and had to deal with a mass of Lutherans that were all waiting to go up two escalators for worship.
We did make it to the mall for a while and then headed off to dinner at Mulate's "the original Cajun restaurant". I bought fried alligator appetizers for everyone to try. Some, like Kyle, liked it so much they ordered it for dinner. Some, like Morgan and Heather Neely before her, were very skeptical. Great picture to come. After many faces, much trepidation and Randall's comforting "it tastes just like ferret", Morgan finally tried some. When she did, she went back for more because "that stuff's good!". We had a great dinner and a show as Ben was pulling pranks on Lauren and surrounding tables. (He tied napkins together and put them up his hoodie sleeve and had them pull it out.) It was time to head to the dome but surprise, surprise, it was raining. So, Randall went and got the 15 passenger van and drove the group to the dome and dropped them all off but me. I walked back to the dome with Randall and we arrived just in time for dome time.
For an hour and a half we sang and listened to several inspirational speakers including a singer who plays the guitar even though he was born with one forearm, a woman who served as missionary in South Africa and an 18 year old woman whose family is serving as missionaries in Tanzania. The bishop concluded the evening with inspirational words. Memorable words included "In the west, they have watches, in Africa we have time". The gift of being present with someone is one of the greatest gifts we can give and sometimes rare in our 27 seconds ago culture. We were also urged to remember that the greatest gift is to love and that means even people who are different from us racially, culturally, and physically. After the dome, the kids went to the Hilton Hotel for fun time: inflatables, karoake, sumo suit wrestling, velcro wall, etc. We concluded with final 15 devotion in a hotel room and agreed it had been a "great day". This is most certainly true.
