Journey Community Church hosts Open Doors Women’s Conference

Joseph Maino, The Fernley Reporter

The Open Doors Women’s Conference brings Christians from different churches, towns and cities together to stop criticizing each other and to make a commitment to do good for their communities. Journey Community Church hosted this year’s annual meeting. Presenters included Alexandria Brown, who discussed “Awaken,” a Reno non-profit, faith-based organization whose mission is to increase awareness and education surrounding the issue of sex trafficking. Other speakers included Paster Ric Fehr of Reno, and Fernley’s Sherry Poundstone and Toni Patterson. Patterson also organized the meeting.

A special part of the conference was the Sand Ceremony.

Patterson told the group, “Each of you received a vial of sand with one specific color. The single color sand represents not only you, but also your specific Christian denomination. You will walk up to the table with the large bowel and pour your vial of colored sand into the it. After all of you empty your small vials of sand into the glass bowel, it will be taken to the back of the church and vigorously mixed so that the individual colored particles of sand can not be separated from each other. Finally, each one of you will receive a new vial that contains the rainbow of color sand grains.”

This “blending of the sands” represents how each person, regardless of their church’s denomination, are all one under God and should work together to improve the lives of people who live in their community.