What an amazing week! We had such fun, built relationships, met God in a new way and watched as he broke down walls and built up hearts!

Day 5

How do we begin to describe the last nights (Thursday) evening rally? Thursday was a designated prayer session, so the Challenge staff set up 4-part booths to stimulate unique prayer experiences. In one booth, students put their thumbprints on a white piece of cardboard and wrote what they believed was God’s vision for their future. An intercession area asked students to write the name of a friend who does not yet know Christ or write a serious personal struggle for another person to pick up and pray about. There was also a celebration area where students could write what God did in their lives this week. Finally, a booth was set up that simply instructed us to slow down, rewind, pause, and humbly talk to God. This was the most transformative part of the night. Within 20 minutes, almost every kid in our youth group was sobbing, either talking to God themselves or praying with their friends. For me (Brittany), the most amazing part was feeling the presence of God within our midst and knowing that such powerful change was happening in the room. Shannon here is still trying to comprehend what exactly happened last night, awestruck at the spiritual healing last night. With teary eyes and rejoicing hearts, we then rose and shouted praise to the One who loves our broken and corrupt souls despite our shortcomings. What a blessing and a miracle! What an amazing, life-changing night!
Today (July 2), we woke up and went about our daily morning schedule. This morning at our rally, Geoff Safford talked to us about being hungry for righteousness. Matthew 5:6 was the verse of the day. We talked about how you cannot be called righteous in Gods eyes without justification and personal sanctification. We gathered into our Huddle where a lot of good discussion took place. After that, we had the opportunity to go to afternoon classes. A few of us were lucky enough to attend Worship 101, where we got to talk with Kristian Stanfill and his band and ask them questions. Some of us also got to play Ultimate Frisbee, and sadly that didn’t turn out as we had hoped it would… we were eliminated in the first round. But we still had a blast!!!!!!!! We then had to pose beautifully for our group picture, ran to dinner, went to prayer army and then we were off to our last evening rally of the Challenge 2010 conference. Kids were so crazy that we were being held back in order to get up to the stage to watch Kristian Stanfill up close. Me (Shannon) and Sarah were able to push our way to the front and it was SO incredible!!! We have had the most amazing time worshiping with the 4,000 + students and learning about the love we have in our Savior. Tonight the speaker Nick Hall spoke to us about Persecution. What spoke to us about tonight was that Nick didn’t try to make our walk with God sound easy. In fact, if we are following God in a way so as to bring glory to Him, persecution should come…and we should consider it a blessing and a compliment (2 Tim. 3:12). Persecution for our faith and our boldness to share the truth of the Lord is a blessing and we are blessed because in the endeavor of following Christ and sharing His sufferings on earth, we can know God more and join the ranks of the saints who have preceded us.
Security is getting upset, so we have to sign off for the night…Cedar Point tomorrow!!!!!!!!!  Love and miss you all!

Shannon and Brittany

Day 4

Today during challenge... We started out the day with a nice breakfast of cheese (if you could call it that) omelets with a side of ham. The next event of the day was the AM rally in which D.A. Horton spoke about the difference between Peacekeepers(not changing just remaining to keep the existing peace) and Peacemakers(who create peace by spreading the gospel). Clearly the latter of the two is more desirable. The next event was lunch which we ordered Hungry Howie's Pizza for. After lunch we had an option to go to several Labs as they are known. Most of the males attended a Lab called "Being a Man is More than Being Male". This was very inspirational and informative. After these we attended dinner which consisted of Penne pasta with spaghetti sauce and Caesar salad with a nice carrot cake for dessert. The night rally today was simply amazing! It started out with some skits. Next we had a prayer session for 30 minutes which was moving. We ended off this rally with many great songs!

Dane Ruhnau

Day 3

Hey everybody!

This is a post to summarize the Wednesday we had here in Columbus. The day started out with the best breakfast of the week to date, and it improved from there. D.A. Horton, a unique speaker from Kansas City, spoke to us concerning the beatitude, "Blessed are the poor in heart, for they will see God" (Matthew 5:8). It was a very good reality check for us. D.A. told us that nothing foreign should reside in our thoughts. He challenged us to value purity so much that it invades every part of our life. God spoke to me through this beatitude because I was spoken to by God to expose everything before Him. Horton compared our minds and hearts to houses with many rooms; are we hiding those rooms like they haven't been cleaned and we have guests over? God should be a permanent resident in each of our hearts, and we need to allow Him to inspect and clean out each aspect of sin that we hold onto.

That afternoon we headed into Columbus to minister to people in the city. I wish we had more time, but as our leader told us, this was a taste of what we can experience in our own town and surrounding area (Salt Lake City). Our assigned area with the Urban Entry ministry was Agora Ministries. It couldn't have been more than 15 blocks from downtown Columbus, but just from the outward appearance of things the area was hurting. Agora serves the children of the community by leading church services and offering many different other services to address various community needs. Our task was to venture into the neighborhoods and minister through service work in God's name, representing Agora. This amounted to an hour of picking up trash for many of us. My favorite part was talking with the 15 year-old boy who led us around the area. His name was Charles, and he was living with his grandmother, who has full custody of him. He has lived in several places in that neighborhood with various relatives, and all he would tell me was that he didn't like his mother. He works at Agora in order to afford school clothes. Please pray for children like Charles, because Columbus seems to be full of kids like him. Also please pray for Agora as they continue to work with these kids.

The evening rally was incredible. Geoff Stafford shared with us about meekness (Matthew 5:5). Meekness does not equal weakness. Meekness has spirit and stamina, but it is completely under the control of God. Meekness is strength and power under control that requires knowing who we belong to. He gave us several examples of meekness, and challenged us to be meek. Ask us when we return to share with you the traits of someone who is meek. I was inspired to become someone not concerned with personal gain or accomplishment through my own means, but to channel the spirit of God through me for His gain. It's not my life to have anyway.

Final thing: while we were in our breakout sessions after the evening rally, we had a great time of sharing within the group. The previous night, many of us had rededicated our lives to Christ, so the majority of the group shared with everyone else why they had done that and how we could keep them in our prayers and encourage them for accountability. After we had finished, a drunk man came into our huddle and, with tears in his eyes, asked us to pray for his mother who suffers from cystic fibrosis. It was humbling to be used in that way and hold his hand while we asked God for a miracle in Debra's (his mother's) life. Darren Yager sat with him after we prayed for him, and I'm grateful that we could all be used in that way.

Please continue to pray for safety and spiritual inspiration during this week. Pray for Charles, Agora Ministries, and Debra and her son. And please keep us accountable and ask us how God worked in us this week when we return! God bless you all, and we'll see you Sunday!

Matt Pershe