The first two days after we left Sunlight, we spent on IWU’s campus helping them prepare for Momentum Youth Conference. I helped build the stage! It was lots of fun!

 

Sunday night we had another $2 Dinner evening. Our teamwork was so much better than the last time and we realized how much we had grown together as a team in just the last 3 weeks since the last one. However, also unlike last time, the food was horrible. Never expect to be able to make 20 baked potatoes in 2 hours. Long story short, we ate mostly raw potatoes that night. But we ate them as a team and laughed at ourselves, it was all good.

 

Momentum was a special week. I did not live with my team or really spend much time with them. I wasn’t supposed to. We were on IWU’s campus all week and since my youth group attended the Momentum, I spent the week with them. It was so good to be with my youth group again after not seeing them all summer. The hard part about it though was being with them after seeing God work so incredibly all summer and not being able to express what happened to me in a way that they would really understand.

 

The first night we were there, I realized that spiritually I didn’t know the guys in my youth group as well as the guys on my team because we had spent the summer growing together in Christ and living together and talking openly about how we were doing with God, but that didn’t happen back home. So I had grown up with these guys, and still felt like they were strangers with familiar faces. So I gathered all the guys in my room together and we shared our testimonies with each other. God definitely used it to crack the door into openness between us and vulnerability which is uncommon among guys. But we grew a lot together.

 

The only time I really spent with my team was when we were practicing to help Jordan Howerton Band lead worship up front during the evening sessions.

 

Power Trax were mini sessions about specific problems that many teenagers face in their life now. Things like depression, or violent video games, science in school, knowing God’s will, etc. Each day there were about 5-10 to choose from. (Some were guys only or girls only).

 

During main sessions, which were required for everyone, JHB played worship, there a mini lesson given by a guest speaker usually in a creative way like spoken word. Then there was also a sermon given that connected to the theme of the week: “Relentless” which came from the story of Daniel.

 

Every morning, one of our youth leaders convinced the guys to come run with him as soon as they got up before anyone else was up. Most of the guys ended up coming which was amazing for teenagers and we ran about half a mile to the stadium where we did a lap on the track and then stretched and did a mini workout. Then we prayed together and ran back. It was something I had never done before and I was a little opposed to getting up early and working out, but it ended up being really cool and a good time of fellowship. I was glad I did it.

 

One of the afternoons was spent going out into the surrounding area and doing some ministry with the youth group. My group went to an old school that had been turned into a retirement center. It was kinda creepy and if you had painted red streaks on the walls it could totally have been used for a horror film, but it was fun to do ministry cleaning and fixing things around the place with my youth group like I had been doing all summer with my team.

 

Saturday, everyone went out in the afternoon to go share Christ with people. My youth group was sent to a public park where there were many people relaxing and having fun. There wasn’t much success to be had because people didn’t really want to talk about Jesus, but we had a few really good conversations.