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