The team was ushered into a back meeting room next to the kitchen.
They met their host pastor team, which included the senior pastors Mordecai and Hannah; the associate pastors Jeff and Janet; the youth pastor Rick; and the worship leaders Liz and Katie (no relation to each other).
"We spoke on the phone," Hannah said to Shine. "It's nice to finally meet in person. You nervous?"
"Oh, yes," Shine said.
"Well, that's okay," Hannah said. "We all are."
"I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a little shaky," Mordecai said. "But this ain't our first rodeo either. It looks like we're gonna have a bigger turn out than we thought, though. We was thinking a few thousand people, but there's gotta be that much in line already, and it's just starting."
"A few thousand?" Rogue almost choked.
"Oh, for a mega church conference, that's nothing," Shine told her. "My smaller church at home has a few hundred people on a given week even without a conference."
"I've never seen that many people in one place together," Rogue said weakly.
"At least if dey weren't trying to kill us," Gambit muttered.
"So which of you is Storm?" Jeff asked.
Storm nodded.
"I admire your willingness to put yourself out there," Jeff said. "We were surprised to hear someone agreed to. But, God willing, it's going to catch people's attention."
Storm smiled weakly.
"Though if any of the rest of you want to share, we still have open time for it," Janet said. "We tend to go long...into the wee hours of the morning usually. So there'll be time for spontaneous things."
[I was taken to many conferences as a child, not willingly, and going till midnight was a short one. Same with my friends who mentioned the same thing. We don't do things lightly.]
"How can anyone talk 'bout God for dat many hours?" Gambit wondered.
"Oh, usually we're through talking about God by 10 or so, but the Spirit will move during our closing worship," Mordecai, who told them to call him Morty, said quite casually.
Gambit looked at him oddly.
"No telling what might happen," Janet said. "Last year's conference, we had several people get healed. That was the theme of the conference."
"And they were genuine, not rigged?" Xavier said, not thinking how rude it was.
They looked at him oddly.
"Oh...forgive me, I had heard stories of that," Xavier said.
"Well...perhaps some people do set it up, for attention." Morty did not sound like he took kindly to such people. "But we would never do that. We shoot straight here."
"You never know what could happen." Hannah shrugged. "But we haven't planned it, it's just what we're open to. If you want to include a time of prayer for that, by all means. We've been following Mike's lead this whole time. No one else has done this."
"I'm not opposed to that," Mike said. "I'm sure many mutants would like that, as well as the rest of the people who are here out of curiosity. We must remember that while we invited mutants, the other people are just as important and will be seeking the truth also."
"Are you going to address them directly?" Morty asked. "I think it might be wise, but I feel strongly that turning this into a soap box tirade against the wrong humans have done to mutants would be foolish. We want to make peace, not war, with the people. And I have to ask, 'cause we did have someone do that once or twice, back when we were just getting started."
