Together 2016

On Saturday, July 16, Tuf, Anthony, Sara (Anthony's little sister) and I went to the National Mall for an entire day Christian event, Together 2016. The event was meant for all Christian's regardless of your theological view to come and worship the one true God as one. 

It was a crazy hot day and maybe because of recent events there were only 2 ways to enter the area and 2 ways to leave. As we walked through the security line to get in there were protestors, not something I expecting, but should have. I just smiled and did not engage in them but rather I prayed that they would stop judging everyone and learn to love people, even if you disagree with what they believe. When we got in we were hoping for some shade, but there are not a lot of trees around the Washington Monument, so we decided to just find a spot and put up our umbrellas. Have I mentioned how hot it was? So hot! But thankfully we like modern worship music and we didn't have to wait for to long before Passion took the stage and then one of our favorite artist Crowder. 

Our view of the stage.

Tuf and I walked the roughly 1 mile to Distinct Taco. And as we were walking to District Taco we totally walked through a fire hydrant spray. Because of the heat they had opened a fire hydrant so that people could cool off. They also brought in a couple metro buses for "cooling buses". When we got to District Taco, I wiped the sweat off of my arm and instantly it reappeared again - yeah gross.

After we got back from District Taco and started eating our lunch, we all decided that it was too hot and that we could go home and stream the rest of it on our TV. As we were waiting in line to get back to our car (we parked in a government parking lot, so we had to go through security) we got an alert  that the event was canceled due to the extreme heat and that one of our favorite bands, Hillsong was going to take the stage at 4pm rather than later in the evening. I was reading on Twitter that between 300-500 people had to be treated for heat related issues, and the medical personnel was overwhelmed with everyone that needed help, so that is why they closed it. The event still went from 9am - 4pm and we were there for almost the entire thing. Maybe next time they do an event like this, they will do it in October.

I am not sure how many people actually attended but probably in the realm of a few 100 thousand people. There goal was a million, but obviously there were not that many people. It was a great idea and I am so thankful for the organizer that they did this in our nation's capitol and thankful that we were able to attend.