{"id":933,"date":"2009-03-16T02:38:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-16T02:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/?p=933"},"modified":"2020-07-02T12:13:42","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T12:13:42","slug":"the-choo-choo-in-chattanooga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/?p=933","title":{"rendered":"The Choo Choo in Chattanooga"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style='text-align:center;margin:0px auto 10px;'><a href=\"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/IMG_8.JPG\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<p>Last Thursday my friend &#038; co-chair of Peace&#8217;s Comfort &#038; Care Ministry, Lou, &#038; I traveled to Chattanooga, Tenn., to attend the Presbyterian Church of America&#8217;s 2009 Mercy Conference.<br \/>We flew from RDU to Charlotte, &#038; from there on to Tenn. The weather was overcast &#038; drizzly &#038; rainy&#8211;my kind of day:) I do believe we spent more time waiting to take off than actually in the air!<\/p>\n<p>We found Chattanooga to be a friendly town. We stayed at the Choo Choo Inn pictured here. The Inn is the restored original train depot &#038; is at least a hundred years old. Much revitalization is going on in the area, &#038; I found downtown Chattanooga to be a charming place.<\/p>\n<p>After arriving at the hotel too early to check in, we grabbed some lunch &#038; headed straight for the Tennessee Aquarium, the &#8220;crown jewel&#8221; of Chattanooga (that&#8217;s my opinion:)), right along the banks of the Tennessee River. The Aquarium is as interesting &#038; beautiful as the first time I saw it more than 10 years ago! And recently they&#8217;ve added a penguin exhibit:)!<br \/>After enjoying the Aquarium we rushed back to the &#8220;Choo Choo&#8221; to check in, ordered a take-out supper, took our luggage to our room, then dashed to catch the church shuttle van to New City Presbyterian, our host for the Conference.<\/p>\n<p>New City is such a unique church it requires it&#8217;s own blog, but suffice it to say, the people were warm, hospitable, &#038; made us feel right at home the entire time. Throughout the two &#038; 1\/4 days we heard inspirational &#038; uplifting words, powerful praise songs directed &#038; led by James Ward, &#038; attended workshops where we listened, took notes, &#038; were encouraged &#038; challenged.<br \/>After returning to the hotel Thursday evening we headed straight to bed, exhausted.<br \/>Friday the entire day was spent at New City listening &#038; singing, praying, discussing, meeting people, plus eating lunch &#038; supper together, from 9am to 9pm. Then Saturday morning we attended one last workshop &#038; one more plenary session before it was time to say our thank you&#8217;s &#038; goodbyes. <\/p>\n<p>The flights back went smoothly, even with gloomy rainy weather following us from Tenn. to Charlotte &#038; on to Raleigh, where we arrived home by 7:15 pm.<\/p>\n<p>It was a whirlwind trip, our minds are full of mercy information, &#038; we are feeling like we need another weekend before the normal routine resumes!!<br \/>The experience was exhilarating. It was also a treat for the two of us to go together to hear about mercy, our passion. On the way home Lou &#038; I attempted to sort through our notes &#038; thoughts to put it all in perspective. <\/p>\n<p>The main questions are: what did God desire us to learn from our time spent at New City, &#038; what information is most important to share with Peace Church??<br \/>We may not know right away&#8230;.. <\/p>\n<div style='clear:both; text-align:CENTER'><a href=\"http:\/\/picasa.google.com\/blogger\/\" target=\"ext\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/photos1.blogger.com\/pbp.gif\" alt=\"Posted by Picasa\" style=\"border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;\" align=\"middle\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Last Thursday my friend &#038; co-chair of Peace&#8217;s Comfort &#038; Care Ministry, Lou, &#038; I traveled to Chattanooga, Tenn., to attend the Presbyterian Church of America&#8217;s 2009 Mercy Conference.We flew from RDU to Charlotte, &#038; from there on to Tenn. The weather was overcast &#038; drizzly &#038; rainy&#8211;my kind of day:) I do believe [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1319,"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933\/revisions\/1319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}