Saturday, July 9th NYC

Today, the second to last day of the conference was another great, fun day. The kids had a bit of a break today.. no morning service, and no seminars... It was "tourist" day today. So our family took off on a tourist adventure as well... and what do you know... we ended up in the same exact spot they were having their scavenger hunt! In the whole city, we ended up on the same street at the same time (some of us). I got a quick picture of one of the groups who was running to and fro.. it is below on the painted horse. I tried to get others... but they were all about running around and not posing for my slow iphone maneuvers... haha.

The service tonight was another power-packed hour and a half. The organizers of the event got up and gave some pretty great statistics of the service acts that happened on Wednesday. $120,ooo worth of goods were donated that filled 7 semi-trucks. 33,000 man hours were given on 240 project sites across Louisville (from painting, cleaning out yards, houses and charities, to making bracelets to raise money for autism). On the last night a plea was given to support a child, and 1,476 children were sponsored. And throughout the week, 240,000 meals were packaged up for the needy. Pretty impressive figures. Louiseville will not forget the students who came to NYC in July of 2011.

Tonight's message came from Mark Matlock. He was another talented speaker, who kept the kid's attention. His message was about Jesus healing the blind man on the Sabbath Day and the Pharisee's reaction to it.... being upset that he would "work" on the Sabbath, he must not be of God. He challenged us to not be blind to Christ... the bigger picture. He talked about getting so obsessed with one aspect of God, that we forget the others... The Pharisees were so obsessed with holiness, they made all the rules and laws to follow it, but forgot about the Love. We can do the same thing. Maybe we can get so consumed with God's love, that we don't stand up for anything that is wrong anymore... etc. He said having sight is not enough... we must have "insight" and sometimes our "insight" might make other's uncomfortable, and might make us outcasts. We have to be prepared for that.

Then the evening was finished off by a rockin' concert by the David Crowder Band. He gave it his Texas flare, and even did a few hymns in "hoe-down" style, like "I'll fly away"... with a lot of clapping and thumping. It was very fun. I'm going to try and include a clip from my iphone below (not sure how it will upload) of his final song.

It has been an action-packed, highly intense, tons-of-content, major challenge type of week. It will be interesting to see how the teens come home and break it down and live it. I have been truly blessed by the speakers, but even moreso, by observing the fun our kids are having. I had hoped to get some of their personal testimonies... but no one wanted to stop having fun for even one moment and text me anything... they were going non-stop! I don't know if they even slept! I'm sure Jared will have lots of video and testimony when they get home. We are heading out to Ohio on a family trip directly after the sersvice tomorrow, so I don't know if I will post anything, unless it's relevant to our kids. Thanks for listening/reading my observations. We have amazing kids, and we have to trust that God has a plan for each one of them, different and unique in it's purpose. They have heard powerful truth this week, that has been planted somewhere inside of their hearts!

OH! And on a final note... I asked Skitch/Eric if there had been any "incidents" of misbehavior with our kids at the hotel... and he said that there had been one incident by some teens from a different church ... someone threw a towel at a maid, and the pool had to be closed down. That's IT! Whew! For those of us with boys, we can all breathe a deep sigh of relief. Of course... there is tonight... =)

Blessings!
Michelle