2009 BJU Friendship Banquet

So yesterday we went to the BJU Friendship banquet thing. We left our house, at about ten thirty a.m., I should say. Some of the teens from our church rode with us in our van. The trip was quite like many of our other trips between SLC and NV, but I managed not to become too bored in general. I did a little writing, and wrote somewhere around six pages, and then just listened to part of an audiobook the rest of the way there.

When we arrived in Salt Lake at the hotel where they did the banquet thing, I was more than glad to be out of the back of the stuffy van. We walked inside, talked with some people, then flocked over into the banquet room. We must have arrived earlier than the majority of people, for after a few minutes, people started arriving in hordes.

Suddenly, everybody was taking seats for themselves, and so did I. At first I thought I had been stuck at the wrong table. Joel was at the table with me, yet my brother Jed was trapped between us. Several other people sat around the table, like my brother Caleb and some guy that was on the banqueting team, named something like Andrew Newton. He was the sort of fellow that might have discovered something fundamental like gravity. He was friendly. Most of the meal he spoke with Caleb about important college stuff. I remembered him from before the meal, when he was going about the room meeting with people. On the far wall they had a projector going through a cycle of about thirty pictures of BJU for the greater part of the meal.

Stephen Jones gave a little intro before we prayed and started eating. At first it looked like all we were going to eat was a little plate of salad, and then a slice of cheesecake. Then I remembered I hadn't eaten lunch that day. But to my rescue, they brought out another dish about halfway through the meal that had some meat on it. It had some rice and baked vegetables on it, but the veggies were'nt the most impressive I had ever had. There was this sort of giant pork french-fry thing with a gravy mote around its girth sitting on the plate.

Partway through the meal, Joel leaned over and said jokingly as only he can do, "I think I've been stuck at the wrong table." I said nothing in reply, probably for the better.

About when I started into my cheesecake, they started a slide show thing that showed why it is so awesome to be at BJU. There was a "u" that kept flying around the screen. After that, some BJU lady sang a few songs and gave a testimony, then Sir Andrew at our table gave his testimony. Steve Jones said a few more things and had a card drawn from a pile, and somebody won something, but I know not what it was, nor do I really care. There was a quick fluster about donating, and Joel picked up one of his three forks and said, "Well, if these are silver..."

Mr. Miller, I think, then prayed and everybody was dismissed. Everybody started clambering out of their chairs and the room was soon full of blabbering on every side. I went around and talked with a few people. Steve J. seemed to be friendly enough. I talked with Mr. Young from Elko, and when he talks, it is very animated. At the end, I joined up with Ben for a while, then kind of wandered around with one of the youth that came from our church, George. We meandered around both inside, upstairs, and outside the building. When we went upstairs once to find the room that the young kids stayed during the banquet thing, we walked by the elevator and the door opened. Some guy said "Woops, wrong level," and closed the doors again. The rest of the time we stayed downstairs and outside. Elise had decided to bring some kind of slim paper holder thing, full of papers, to show some of the people. I'm guessing it was something she had been working on. I had a quick thought about bringing in my massive notebook binder thing, but I decided against it. Ben talked with Steve for quite a while, about stuff, no doubt. The banqueter team at the end of the meal gave out 2 gb flashdrives at the end. I decided to find out what the music was like that they put on it the next day, but all I found on the drive was a few shortcuts.

The whole banquet was a bit different then I expected, for when I walked in, I didn't expect it to be set up so fancy. A bit too fancy for the likes of me, though.

Soon we decided to leave, and so we did. I finished another page or two then tried to go to sleep, but there was no possible way to. We arrived at home at about 3:00 a.m. I had no trouble falling to sleep that night... er... morning. I did enjoy it.