This past weekend, the young people of the Church in Cleveland hosted a conference for those in fifth grade to those in 12th grade. The topic of the weekend was that Jesus is Real and Relevant today. We sent out an invitation all over the Great Lakes area and we maxed out at 130 people! They came from the land surrounded by four Great Lakes (Michigan), the Capital of the Buckeye State (Columbus), the land where the hairy beasts roam (Buffalo), the place where humans are grown (Mansfield), and the cities surrounding the home of Rock N' Roll (Lorain, Willoughby, Akron, and Cleveland Heights).
The first night we broke up into small groups and asked the kids to share their "AHA!" moments which were the moments in their life when knew Jesus proved Himself real to them. At first, I thought only a handful of them would share very small and simple moments...boy was I wrong. These kids were like a floodgate waiting to open and release the many rushing waters kept at bay. The stories they told ranged from quite hilarious, to bizarre, to sincere, but through their own lips, they proved that Jesus is real. Even when I asked them to pray, I didn't have to encourage/volunteer/force them. The majority prayed on their own.
The next morning we were up bright and early at 7:30AM to go tobogganing. The week before this conference, the weather fluctuated between the upper 30s and 40s, and it wasn't looking like good tobogganing weather. But when Saturday rolled around, lo and behold, it was 21 degrees and snowing...hard. We had a blast. It was especially fun flying off the track with snow pelting you and trying to see who could claim the fame of the farthest distance. There were also nice, warm fires and plenty of hot chocolate.
There rest of the time consisted of power full messages and killer activities. The three messages portrayed Jesus as the friend of sinners, Jesus walking on water and calling us to Him and to have faith, and the story of the paralytic and of all the people that were at this scene the question was "Who are you?" There were also two really good testimonies of Jesus being real to these people.
The activities for the time were Live Guess Who and Fort Knox. Live Guess Who was the board game "Guess Who," but played with people as the game pieces and Fort Knox was a game where you had to steal "gold (a.k.a. medic balls)" from your opponents forts while defending your own. Also we had Chipotle for dinner that night. Booyah!
The Lord answered a lot of prayers during that weekend and I think it's safe to say it was a success.
One last note (changing topic) when I went to preach the gospel at CSU on Fri. Feb 17th, Paul Mann and I ran into a Deist, which is someone who believes that their is only one deity, but that deity has many different forms (Allah, God, Zeus, all Greek gods, all hindu gods, and every other God throughout time). It was a very interesting conversation, but it's too bad it ended up being a wild goose chase.
This week (19th-24th) the interns will be going to Ashland Woods for a corporate time with Brother Titus. Please pray for this time as well as the upcoming summer events because the summer is fast approaching!
Song I've been enjoying this week: "I Lift My Hands" by Chris Tomlin.
Have a God week everyone!
