What an amazing God we serve through the most amazing church on the planet! I didn't go to the Gauntlet so my information comes from twitter, vimeo and Facebook updates.
The annual youth trip to Daytona Beach had 1350 students, 450 adult small group leaders, and 100 support people. Forty buses carried people from 5 campuses, leaving early Monday morning. There were 130 kids who surrendered their lives to Jesus and 287 who publicly declared "Jesus is my Lord and Savior" and got dunked in the ocean at sunrise on Thursday. WooHoo!!
One of the things I like is the way the leadership strives to focus on Jesus and focus on building friendships. It starts at the very beginning by putting the guys and girls on separate buses. The trip is about Jesus - as is everything NewSpring does.
They stayed at the Daytona Hilton which is NOT a shabby place. They had morning and evening worship and teaching times - with big screens and lights and live band - everything the kids are used to at NewSpring. Pastor Perry even led worship for one session. In between times they had personal devotional time as well as small group discussion time. But of course, you're at the beach so there has to be play time as well. Nate thought it was cool that Perry and Charisse rode the slingshot.
I got to go with Holly and Bella, Nate's mom and sister, to pick up Nate when he got home Friday evening and he just couldn't stop talking about all he heard and learned. He told us about Jonah. He read us Bible passages he's going to memorize. He talked about wanting to read all the New Testament. (He read Mark, Ephesians and started on Timothy while there. He read John and Acts before he left.) He talked about idols in his life - cell phone (texting), video games and computer time. He talked about being asked to pray for his bus, up front, over the microphone and was excited to do it.
Thank you, NewSpring, for taking this child - he just turned twelve 2 weeks ago - and helping him get excited about Jesus and the Bible by presenting the Truth in a way that captures his attention and helps him to understand how great our God is.
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