Spring Break has come and gone and it has taken all of my energy with it. I am so beat. Jules and I have been going nonstop since last week. First, we had another amazing opportunity to take our youth band to another youth rally here in Orlando called "Spring Break Free." They made us so proud. They have been allowing God to use them in so many ways and as they make themselves available their talents get better and better. Just this week we got another call to lead worship again at a "To Write Love On Her Arms" venue. God is so good! Without Him, none of this would be possible. For more photos of the ID Band's last worship experience click
HERE.
Well, all of that was on Thursday and on Friday our youth group took their 2
nd annual youth retreat in Lake Wales, FL at Lake Aurora Christian Camp. Let me just say..."IT WAS AMAZING!" Last year was our first time taking a retreat with our kids and needless to say...the entire youth group wasn't completely sold on the idea and therefore we only had 21 attend. Well, when they came back from the trip last year the impact was definitely evident and our youth were the best advertisement for this year's trip. This year we took 43. We more than doubled our attendees. We take a lot of trips with our youth throughout the year but this is the cheapest and by far the most impacting, in my eyes. This years trip was no different. We tell our kids the whole purpose of the trip up front. It's all about unity and relationship. It's our chance to bring those in from the outer edges and make them feel apart of the group. It's our chance to encourage each other while being encouraged by God in our times of prayer and worship. It's a time for good healthy competition to illustrate that we are all in this together and we need each other to win this race. And it's a time for us to unplug from the world and our electronics (we collect all cell phones a soon as we get there) and just get back to the basics; God and His body of believers.
This year we pulled some new activities out and had a blast with them. They include Cheese IT, Extreme Dodge Ball, Canoe Races, Obstacle Courses, Barrel Brawl, Slip-n-Slide Kickball, Flour Power Capture the Flag, Ropes Courses, Worship, and Baptisms. As you can see with some of the photos below our youth enjoyed every minute of it and seeing them have fun with no complaining, and no cliques or insider clubs was just AMAZING. You can check out more of the photos from our retreat
HERE.
But now that the weekend has come and gone we have to head back to reality and part of that reality is that Judah starts his first week of daycare. It goes without saying that Julie was not that happiest camper...lol...She had already been gone for 2 days away from Judah while my parents babysat during our youth retreat and the last thing she wanted to do was leave him with a complete stranger at daycare. He did great his first day and Momma Jules is learning to cut the umbilical chord...lol...Until next time,
HOLLA!
These past couple weeks of Identity Youth have just been AMAZING. I know I haven't blogged in quite a while because of the crazy pace of my life lately but I just wanted to get on blogger and give God some glory for what he has been doing in and through the Identity Student Ministries. Last week we had a whole night of worship with the ID Band. We changed
it up a bit and kind of did an acoustic set. I say kind of because we did some acoustic guitar stuff with a box drum and we did some electric stuff too. The presence of God was so strong!
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