Falls Creek or BUST!

We leave in the morning for Falls Creek. If you don't know much about Falls Creek, it is the largest youth camp in the world. Each week, 5,000-7,000 students gather together to worship and seek God. You can check out more at http://www.skopos.org/ and go to Falls Creek. You can also listen to the evening worship services by going to the same website and clicking on Falls Creek/ Camp Materials/Listen to the Service

It's going to be an incredible week. I am hoping that we can provide you with daily updates to see and hear what God is doing through pictures, testimonies, and blog reports. The first update will probably be Tuesday morning--Mondays are always a hard day due to traveling and getting everyone on the same page.

Could you pray with us this week? Pray for those who do not know Christ to ask Him into their lives and for each of us as believers to truly seek God. The theme for the whole camp is GRAZE....our cabin theme/t-shirt is "Don't Just Do Something, Stand There." We've all heard at one point in our life from our parents or another authority figure, "Don't Just Stand There, Do Something." We want to challenge our students to simply spend time with our Messiah--simply to love Him--adore Him. Our desire is to "be still and know that He is God." Would you pray that our students would not be blinded by the misperceptions that is presented to them about who God is by the world? Pray that they would KNOW the real God and His deep desire to know and love them.

Parents, I pray that you will be refreshed this week! I will be praying for you as you prepare for your students return on Saturday.

Mike

**Also, while we are at camp....check out the AWESTAR updates of our missionaries in Peru(Mikayla and Aaron) and Chile(Bethany) among other trips @ http://www.awestar.org/ and to go trip updates. We also have another missionary in China(Mandy). We had a great opportunity to host the AWESTAR missionary leaders before they headed for AWESTAR University--what a great experience--so in essence we feel like all those who are going on AWE trips are part of our church family!

Freedom Celebration 2008

We just wrapped up another Freedom Celebration. Our Freedom Celebration is a great ministry to our community. We have FREE Hot Dogs, Ice Cream, Games, Pony Rides, and best of all a great FIREWORKS SHOW! I'm a little biased, but I would say one of the best around and it's all right in front of our church. I'm guesstimating that we had around 2,000 people.

Got to meet a lot of new people which is always a cool thing. Brian, Sherry D. and their team did such an excellent job of putting it all together. It's always thought through and done very well. Our desire as a church is for this to be a BRIDGE event--inviting people in our community to a non-threatening environment but creating the opportunity to BRIDGE them to Christ through simple conversation and Christ-like attitudes.