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God worked amazingly throughout the Con this year. However, though, for some reason this year, the Con experience never clicked with me. I just wasn’t into it this year. I mean, it was fun and most things went extremely well, but, for me, I just couldn’t get into it this year. Maybe it was the monotony of the same old thing every year, maybe it was the overwhelming evil on the convention floor, maybe my heart wasn’t right, maybe I had high expectations for our table, whatever it was I was not content for about the first 3 days. Let me explain.
Thursday
Ralph and I drove down and found the dock areas to unload our boxes. While the union guys were going to drop off our boxes at our table, I went to get both mine and Ralph’s badges, while Ralph went to go park the car. I had to walk the perimeter of the convention center to get to the registration center (an extremely long walk). I asked the lady for both mine and Ralph’s badges, reluctantly, only after I gave her my cell phone number (for contact purposes) did she give me Ralph’s exhibitor badge. I walked back to our small press table with my conquest (Ralph’s badge) and who do I see sitting there? Ralph, with his exhibitor’s badge! Long story short, we ended up with an extra exhibitor’s badge, which we gave to Geoff. Ralph and I prayed before the Con opened. It would turn out to be a busy day.
The day seemed to drag on. I went up to the patio area to take a break. I had been up since 3:30 AM and tried to take a nap, but I couldn’t. I dropped off some of my Jesus postcards at the freebie table. Christine was still waiting on news whether a small press table would become available for her to use. It didn’t look good for her. She had new books to sell and no place to sell them.
After the floor closed, Ralph, Cedric, Don and I went to check into our hotel. “I’m sorry, Mr. Flores, there are no more double beds left. All we have is a King-size bed.” “Well, that’s fine, I guess.” That meant one more person would be sharing the floor with the rest of us guys. We got up to the room and dropped off our entire luggage. The phone rang. “Mr. Flores, we will be sending up two roll-away beds for your room.” “Uh, well, Thank you!” Somehow God worked out a way for us to get two more people off the floor, which would come in handy later as more people would be rooming with us.
After checking into the hotel, we walked a block to the Horton Plaza and had a hearty dinner. Unfortunately the burger place from last year was no longer there, but nonetheless, my hot dog tasted especially good. Others showed up: Christine, Richard, Eric, Linda, Kendra and a few others. We walked back to our hotel about 10:30 and crashed.
Friday
After a good night’s rest, I had high expectations for this day. Ralph and I prayed again before the floor opened. Some of us (whoever was available) decided to have 2 business meetings regarding CCAS’ future publishing projects and marketing projects respectively. I have to say that both meetings went better than I thought they would. God gave us some good ideas that will keep us busy for (roughly) the next 2-3 years.
I went up to the freebie table to drop off some more of my Jesus postcards. This time the “real” guy in charge was there and wouldn’t allow me to drop off my cards. His reasoning was that the freebie had to have something to do with either: a) the Comic Con or b) a comic book. Of which my Jesus postcard was neither. Of both qualifications that he gave me for freebies, I have seen tons of freebies over the years that break them. Too tired to verbally fight him or talk to his manager, I just let it go. Never have I run into such opposition-especially for freebies! After that, I prayed about the situation, but I was still kind of bummed the rest of the day.
Christine got a table! I heard that, earlier in the day, the guy in charge of missing tables called Christine saying that some people never showed up and that their table was now hers! This is probably the most visible way that I saw God work. To understand Christine’s plight, you have to understand that two months ago she “had a table”, 6 weeks ago she had tons of new books printed and 4 weeks ago she suddenly “had no table”. Apparently the Con had decided that there were “too many Christian tables” and that the Con wanted to give “other artists a chance”. Indeed, our Christian presence was growing from .0001% to .001%. Disturbing! But God works all things for His glory and He got a table for Christine no matter what conspiracy was against Christians.
Some of us did “Featured Artist” time at the CCAS table, which meant we could promote our individual books and have an autograph session for a set time. I think it worked. It’s a way of creating interest at our table. Jose and Wayne and his family showed up that day. Ralph started going to different small press tables and getting some contacts for possible speakers for next year’s Spiritual Themes Panel.
The floor closed at 7:00PM. Some people were going to be doing their own thing for dinner so Eric and I decided to do our own thing. In search of a “burger place”, we finally did find one and had a great time.
I got back to the hotel around 11:00PM and everyone was still up talking. Richard and I talked art, while Ralph and Don talked something else, while Cedric was working on his computer. The conversation slowly turned from regular topics to a full-blown geeky conversation on the topic of Spiderman 2 versus X-Men 3 versus Superman Returns. It was as fanboyish and nerdy as one can get. It was great. We also watched a Star Wars spoof on Cedric’s laptop. We laughed ourselves to bed about 1:00 AM.
Saturday
Again, I had high expectations for our table. There hadn’t really been any good conversations with people yet. I also hadn’t seen as much of our freebies being taken-not as much as last year anyway.
Ralph and I prayed again before the floor opened. Clint, Demarcio, Steve L. and Monte showed up that day. I was able to walk around the floor for the first time that day. Of course, there wasn’t anything I was interested in. Same overwhelming nonsensical evil. As much good as our CCAS table was doing, I wasn’t having a good time. I mean the fellowship was great, the ministry was great, and everything within my circle was fine. There’s nothing really that I could point to externally (except, obviously the overwhelming evil and mediocre entertainment) that was wrong, it was just inside of me that something didn’t feel right. I wonder if missionaries ever get depressed in trying to reach people. If I was going to come back next year, God would have to make Sunday a fantastic day. He would have to show me really why I was here. And so I anticipated Sunday.
The rest of Saturday consisted of our BIG dinner at Horton Plaza. It was great joking around with Geoff, Monte and Eric. Some minor photo-wars broke out, but not as bad as 2005. Maybe Janae can come next year and instigate the photo-war.
Sunday
Again, I woke up with high expectations for the day. All the guys in our room (except for Clint, as he was somewhere else preparing for his sermon) prayed for the table, the panel, the message and for a good last day for CCAS.
By the time we got to the room where our Sunday Meeting was going to be, it was about 5 minutes till show time and I didn’t see Scott or Christine yet. I began getting nervous, but put it in God’s hands that He would work out all the facets of this panel for His purposes. I quickly asked Eric to be the emcee. And so, Eric walked up, gave a quick introduction to the Sunday meeting and Clint followed by giving his sermon.
I have to say that Clint’s message was very timely. It had to do with the battle between our flesh and our spirit, specifically challenging us as to which one we should be following. I was blessed to hear his message and I could tell that it resonated with much of the audience. Thank you, Clint, for following God’s leading, even though you wanted to talk about something else!
It was then time for the panel on the subject of “Creating Christian Comics Dealing with Autobiographical and Biographical Material.” The panelists (Robert Luedke, Don Ensign, Christine Kerrick and myself) were superbly moderated by Scott Shuford. I admit that I was slightly nervous answering my first question (being that this was the first panel that I’ve ever been on), but soon lost my anxiety and had a lot of fun answering the questions. Hopefully the panel was edifying to the audience and that it glorified our Lord.
After the panel, I went back down to the table, where it was extremely busy. Ralph had to man the table during the Sunday Meeting and said that it had already been busy at our table. Sunday would turn out to be CCAS’ busiest day.
I had a few good conversations with people. One man came by and wanted to discuss my opinion of church history, specifically dealing with Catholicism versus Protestantism (something that I’m more than happy to do). From what I gathered from his questions and answers, I think he was a Catholic. Apparently, I satisfied his curiosity enough for him to say, “I’m glad to see that you have a balanced perspective.” I think that was a conversation that God setup specifically for me to answer.
I picked up some gifts for myself: David: A Shepherd’s Song, Armor Quest, Diary of Hope, Sadhu Sundar Singh and a few others.
Well, that’s pretty much the end of my personal account of the 2006 Con. Ralph, Clint, Demarcio and I drove back up to Downey and I got home about 10:00PM. Some people usually get depressed when the Con is over. It’s the opposite for me, especially this year; I was glad when it was over. Like I said at the beginning of this journal, I wasn’t really into it this year. I still don’t really know why. I think God had to work on my heart. I now realize that the whole purpose for me coming down to San Diego was for that last day, specifically for the panel and for the conversations. I just had to wade through 3 days of mediocrity to get to that last day.
Psalm 125 took on new meaning for me during the Con, especially the first two verses: “Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds His people from this time forth and forever.”
God did a lot of mighty works during this Con, many of which I’ve tried to recount here. But one of the most important ones was Him bringing me to a place where I could quit trying to do things on my own and just rely on Him. And that’s what it’s all about.
God bless.
July 28, 2006
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