What a great weekend at PBC with the youth! This past Friday night at PBC was the benefit concert for Andy Baker. There was a lot of great singing and over $5,000 was raised! We had some of our youth in attendance at the concert supporting the Baker family. The youth at PBC make it very easy to be proud of the young men and women that they are.
Then this past Saturday we went to WinterJam in Rupp Arena in Lexington. What a great experience and everyone had an awesome time. We heard Revive, FireLight, New Song, Sidewalk Prophets, Tenth Avenue North, Robert Pierre, Newsboys, and Third Day. The music was such a blessing as nearly 22,000 people were gathered in one place worshiping God. Wow, what a great time. If you did not get to come this year make sure you don't miss it next year! We also got to hear Tony Nolan speak. Many people were challenged by the words that he shared with us. Now my prayer is that the convictions that we received will stay with us. I pray we did not leave it back in the arena, but that we took it home with us. One of the things that the youth group did take home with us is a child to sponsor. Holt International was there and had children throughout the world to sponsor so that we can provide food, education, and a safer environment for the child that we have sponsored. We decided to sponsor a child from Africa, his name is Eriya and he is five years old.
The cost of sponsoring a child is $30 dollars a month and with about 35-40 people coming to youth group every week each member of the youth group only needs to give one dollar a month for us to be able to provide for Eriya and his needs. I am very proud of our youth group for deciding to sponsor a child. This was their idea, not mine. We are now very excited to be able to ministering to someone an ocean away and be able to show them the love of Christ and to show them that we care and they are in our thoughts. We should not only give Eriya our monetary support but we should also keep him in our prayers on a daily basis. Please pray for Eriya and his family that God will bless them. WinterJam was a great time and something we will be going back to next year!
But the weekend didn't end on Saturday. Sunday night we had the youth participate in the PBC service. Ben Coffman led a few songs by playing his guitar to start out the night, and did a great job. Then we had a skit by Paul Megilligan, Brandon McCullum, Casey Whittle, Micah Gammon, Zach McCullum, and Rachael Pingleton. The skit came to a hilarious ending with Rachel violently exploding a bag of M&M's into the first three rows of the sanctuary! Which, by the way, I was told would NOT happen. J Nonetheless it was very funny and also helped to prove the point that through our actions people should know what we love and what is important to us. Are your actions showing that you love God? Your actions show what is important to you, what are your actions showing others?
Then we had Casey Whittle and Victoria Bristow talk about WinterJam, the experiences that they had and Victoria talked about Eriya. Then Paul shared a word about the importance of sponsoring a child and how thankful we should be for what we have and that we should give back what God has given to us. He also made mention of the desire of some of the boys in the youth group to go out into the woods for 3 days and trying to survive only with what they have in their pockets! I'll have to let you know how that one goes!
Then Ben Coffman shared a word with us about love. And loving others and how the early church was called "Christ-like" by the people in their cities because they were so like Christ. How much are you like Christ? Are you reflecting the image of Christ? Other people should know that we are Christians by our love. Ben said that our church should be so full of love that we have to open the back door to make more room for love inside. How much love are you showing others? How Christ like are you?
The night ended with a song that was sung by Hannah Hardesty with Ben Coffman playing the guitar. It was a beautiful song and a great end to an awesome weekend with the PBC youth. All of you did a great job Sunday night in the service, I am so proud of you all. Thank you PBC church members so being so supportive of our youth group. We greatly appreciate it and thank you for all you do.
We now look forward to next weekend when on Sunday night we get to meet DecembeRadio! It should be another great weekend, but of course all the weekends with the PBC youth are great weekends!
God bless
- Derek Trout-
