Monday, November 17, 2008

Amazing Weekend - Jwest

What an incredible weekend we just had. It was extremely busy, but yet so worth it all. A group of our MidSkool girls attended the Esther Conference in Stockton. A Big thanks to Kellee, Tina, and my awesome wife Leah for taking the young ladies. I heard they all had an awesome time, and I'm sure Leah will blog it at a later date. Here is a quick glimpse @ the Esther Conference in Stockton :
While they were all @ the Conference, we took advantage of it and had an All Guys night @ the Church. It was crazy fun - with Airsoft, Basketball, Video Games, and food. I really enjoyed connecting to our young men at this event.
Early Saturday morning we had a Blue Bomber Blitz. The last few weeks our attendance has not been as high as times past, so our objective was to get out in the neighborhood and blitz it for a few extra hours. We had a great turnout of Blue Bomber Workers as well as a few of our Sunday School Teachers. We had 42 more kids on the Blue Bomber this week than we had last week...the extra effort payed off!
Sunday was the highlight of my weekend. We had our First MidSkool Movement Youth Service on Sunday morning. The situation that we are having is that on any given Sunday we have approximately 70 MidSkoolers @ the First Church. We have been trying to get them to our Friday Night Venue, but for whatever reason we only get a few of them on Friday. So, we decided to bring a Friday Night Element to Sunday Morning. While the Children were downstairs having Super Kids Church - we packed room 9 with 70 MidSkoolers. It was incredible. We had rockin media, incredible worship led by Christian and Junia, and a great response to the message. At the conclusion of the message, Kids just poured into our "alter" area. They all came with their hands raised seeking to draw closer to God. The majority of them didn't know how to pray, what to say, or even what to do. In the alters, it was very instructional - where I had to teach them how to pray- and open their heart to God. I loved it. After all the Midskoolers left the room and the staff was downstairs, I remained in the room and just basked in the presence of God. I rejoiced all by myself for what God had done in the lives of those that responded to his calling to draw closer to him. I wanted to give special "props" to Christian Johnson, who labored on Saturday setting up the room and making sure it was perfected. Christian is extremely gifted and he did an incredible job connecting to the Midskoolers this weekend. Check out this quick recap:



Today is my brother Mark's 19th Birthday. I can't believe it. He is in his first year in College. Mark is very involved in his church's youth ministry as well as being a dedicated volunteer for the Christmas in the Park Committee here in San Jose. Tonight we intend to meet up with Him and my Mother @ the Cheesecake Factory to celebrate His Day.

3 comments:

James Wilder said...

I've been waiting to hear more about the MidSkool event experiment. Wonderful results!!

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Karen J. Hopper said...

Wonderful report at First Church. And Happy Birthday to Mark. Last time I saw him, he was just a lad. Wow, how time flies!!

 
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