Conference Quotes

My past week has been saturated with conference activities. I have been to two different conferences in this time--and I am still at the second conference!

My current conference is called the North American Roundtable and it is put on by the Refugee Highway Partnership. People from all over North America have gathered at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix to share best practices, to give encouragement, and to learn from one another.

I have been to so many sessions that I don't know where to start! For this post, I am just going to share some facts about refugees and some quotes from the speakers that have stood out to me.

• There are 15 million refugees in the world. This number includes people who have crossed an international border to escape persecution. It does not include the many millions of people who are internally displaced (people who have fled their home but are still within their country's borders.) 
• Half of the world's refugees are children. 
• Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya has 150,000 people living in it, and 3000 new arrivals come each week. 
• Colombia currently has more forcibly displaced people than any other country in the world. 

Notable Quotes: 

• "He's not listening [to the speaker]. He's in the back reading his Bible." Dr. Kigabo Mbazumuntima
• Charity is transactional, not transformational. What transforms people is not intervention, but investment. -Dr. Gary Kinnaman
• "Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! This is the language of heaven." -Rose Mapendo
• "Anger is contagious. You can infect everyone you interact with." -Rose Mapendo
• Wholeheartedness is not a noisy virtue. -Dr. Larrie Gardner
• "What do we do at my organization? We do weird stuff that's hard to explain." -Cody Lorance
• The graveyard is full of indispensable people. -Randy Reynolds
• "The cost of ministry is more than we know." -Randy Reynolds
• Jesus did not fix every problem in Israel. -Dr. Larrie Gardner

I want to emphasize that these are simply quotes that stood out to me in the moment and that I had the time and energy to write down. Some of these are moments of humor, but the presenters did share wonderful information. If you click on the links above, you can learn more about some of the speakers. All of the presentations I have heard have been excellent, and hopefully in the next few days I can share about them in more detail.

For those of you who are wondering why some of the quotes are in quotations and others aren't, those in quotations are direct quotes I wrote down. The others I may have read in their presentation or heard during their presentation but the quote itself may have originally come from a different source. I am not sure, so if you are sure, let me know and I will update for accuracy!