LTIA

June 24^th, 2011 I boarded a plane headed to a conference in Washington D.C. for a week. This wasn’t just any conference though… 

The Leadership Training Institute of America (LTIA) is a non-profit, educational institute offering philosophical, scientific and religious interdisciplinary perspectives and applications from a Biblical world view perspective.

Their vision: A world wide network of academic, spiritual, and societal leaders working together through the ministry of their churches to implement a biblical world view exhibiting a loving devotion to God, a loving heart for people, a striving for personal excellence in all endeavors, and an influence to defend traditional values morally, intellectually, and socially.

I’ve struggled, in the last couple of years, with what I believe and why. It’s not that I don’t KNOW what I believe, it’s that I don’t know how to back it up with the Bible and then verbalize it and explain it to other people. So I was excited to go to this conference because I know a few people who had been to it before and I kind of knew what to expect. I’d also met one of the main speakers, who is a creation scientist and an incredible teacher.

The week was packed full, and everyone was exhausted by the end, but we were also spiritually refreshed and excited by what we had learned. 

 

We started each day with a devotion and breakfast, and then depending on what was scheduled for the day, we usually had a lecture or two. The lectures were one of my favorite parts of the week. They were intense, required participation on the part of the students and covered a lot of information in a short time, but I learned so much from each one. A few of the topics we covered were:

·         How world views are formed

·         Choosing the right world view

·         Is there a God?

·         Inspiration of the Bible

·         Islam

·         Creation Insights

·         Defending the Gospel

·         Humanism in Education

After the morning lecture, we had appointments with different organizations and one day we did a tour of the capital building, and met with a senator. We also did a night tour of the monuments.

Saying the Pledge of Allegiance

I said that the lectures were one of my favorite parts of the whole conference, but my very favorite part was listening and being able to talk to the staff. All of them are very knowledgeable and made time to talk to the students. Walking between activities gave me lots of time to talk to all the students and teachers.

At the end of the week we all had the opportunity to talk about what we learned during the conference and what we thought of it. I got to talk about some of the stuff I learned, but what I realized at the end, was that as much as I learned that week, it just made me hungry for more. I could’ve stayed another whole week and been taught the same exact lectures over again. I determined, about the third day into the conference last year that, I was going to go this year. So that is what I’m doing. I leave June 15^th to go back to D.C. for this same conference, and I have to say that I’m very excited. I can’t wait to hear the lectures again, be challenged in what I believe, talk to the teachers, make new friends, come back excited at what I’ve learned and share that with everyone I know.

 

 We did lots of walking....

  

 One of the organizations we visited was the Heritage Foundation.

 We toured the monuments.....

 ...and rode lots of escalators

 and walked...

 and rode the metro

...and walked

Singing at the Washington Monument

We also visited the Macedonian Embassy.

My small group

At church on Sunday morning.

The Holocaust Museum

In front of the White House

and crossed lots of streets

The whole group in front of the Capitol

 Yes, we did lots of walking ;) but it was worth it! 

Here are the links to the website and the Conference information

LTIA 

Conference information

and if you're interested you should contact me, because there is so much more that could be said about it :)  I would encourage anyone to go to this conference, and I hope what I’ve written here shows you a little of what you would learn and experience if you attended LTIA.

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: -Hosea 4:6a
~Kluane