The Night Before

(Continuation of "Preparing My Own 'Relevance of Genesis'") Saturday night, I "finished" preparations for my "Relevance of Genesis" talk. I ran through it several times, made many adjustments, smoothed out rough areas, and generally felt confident. When Sunday morning came around, I decided to bring my 12" PowerBook PC with me to church in case I had an idea for my talk. When I arrived, I discovered that my normal Sunday school class would not be meeting because the teacher assumed that we would want to be involved in what another class was doing. We weren't really thrilled, so we discussed having a class anyway. Then, it hit me that I had a fully prepared message sitting in my car, and that this group would be perfect to preview it. After deciding to teach and gathering the class together, I realized the issues that I was about to face:

• I had no LCD projector, and my church's was being used.
• I didn't bring the mini-DVI to VGA adapter that the PowerBook would require to connect to a projector or external monitor anyway.
• I decided to face my PowerBook's screen toward the small class, but the 12" screen is about as small as they come.
• Because I had no external display, I could not see my own notes on my own display, so I had to give the talk without notes or outline.
• I left my presentation remote at home, so I'd have to advance screens by pressing spacebar.
• We had no available stand for the computer, so I had to set it on a chair.
• Because of it's low height on the chair, I had to bend over every time that I needed to advanced screens.
• Because I kept the screen facing the class, I had to occasionally turn it away from them so that I could read the quote on the screen.

Obviously, this was all quite awkward, but it still went over pretty well. The class teacher gave me some pointers on things that could use more explanation. I was grateful for that opportunity to preview it. Today (Monday), I followed Ken Ham's advice to present my talk to one of the speaker review team members to get early feedback. It was quite strange to have a large classroom full of only one audience member. But I presented my talk with little distraction from the situation, and the gentleman gave me some great advice and suggestions. If I felt 100% confident Saturday night that my talk was as it should be, then I felt 150% confident Sunday night. After making the changes today, I feel 200% confident that this is my best talk for the time that I'll have (forty-five minutes). I sent emails to my family and most of my friends asking for their prayers. I feel no nervousness, but only confidence that I am following the Lord's leading and that He will guide in the decisions to be made after my presentation.