YEC 2015

I didn't get to post an update yesterday or the day before.  I left my good wife with the chores around the homestead and took our church Youth Group to YEC 2015 (Youth Evangelism Celebration).  It is held each year in the Cajundome in Lafayette, Louisiana and is a great time of worship, teaching, and fun.  Our young people really enjoy it and I think it is an investment in our future.  Sometimes it is all too convenient to look at our culture and get really cynical about the future.  A trip to YEC is a perfect antidote for that!

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We teamed up once again with our sister church in Elton, Louisiana and took over 20 young people to YEC, arriving Monday evening around 6 p.m. where we unloaded all of our sleeping bags and baggage into a church on University near the Cajundome, prior to making our way to the dome for the night's events that started at 7 p.m.  Christ Church Lafayette graciously allowed us to sleep on the floor of their fellowship hall and that saved us lots of money.  The guys and chaperones slept in one room and the girls and chaperones slept in another.  There was much excitement and energy in anticipation of what lay in store at the conference.

After attending the first night's events, we ate at Raising Cane's and then returned to the church to drink hot chocolate, visit and then bed down for the night.  As it neared midnight, the lights were off and it became very quiet in the guys' room.  We could hear a buzz of talking, giggling, etc. coming from the girls' room with no end in sight.  The pastor of the Elton Church said very seriously, "You hear that, gentlemen?"  We all listened intently as he continued, "It has been scientifically proven that women speak on average 20,000 words per day, dwarfing and nearly tripling the mere 7,000 words per day that men speak.  They're trying desperately to get their 20,000 words in before tomorrow!"  We laughed and went to bed, being awakened only a few short hours later by someone's cell phone alarm that blared bagpipe music louder than one might expect at 6 a.m.

We woke up quickly and ate a breakfast of cereal & milk and loaded up the van and cars and headed to the Cajundome for a full day of events, including praise and worship music by Voice of the People, a music group from Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, a Christian illusionist, Jared Hall and special guest speaker Acton Bowen, all intermixed with a DJ and a preacher/poet. Finally we were treated to a concert by The Vertical Church Band before heading home, returning to Jennings at midnight.  The conference was very well planned, with a nice mixture of Truth from God's Word, great Praise & Worship music, and hilarity from the MC/illusionist.

YEC 2015 Lafayette, Louisiana

Students were so moved by the teaching that they streamed down to the arena floor during the invitation time in numbers that reminded me of a Billy Graham Crusade.  Final numbers aren't in, but after the first night, over 130 students had made first time responses to Jesus Christ, asking Him to be their Savior and Lord. Hundreds more restored their commitments to Jesus.

In the conference, they passed out glow-in-the-dark necklaces that everyone wore. We watched a Youth Group in the top of the dome that re-arranged their necklaces to make:

A smiley face...

Jesus...

This one is hard to read, but it says, Praise!:

I could go on and on about the conference, telling you about how Acton Bowen explained what it means to "Take up Your Cross and Follow Him" or about how he talked about how the culture, the media, the world, wants you to believe that everything is all about YOU and how destructive that is, and it keeps us from living life as our Creator would have us live.  I'll leave you, though, with a powerful story (paraphrased) that he told the students, about how much Jesus loves them.

Acton Bowen said that after one of his speaking engagements, he was met by a man recently retired from one of our military Special Forces units.  Mr. Bowen was very interested to talk to him and asked him if he had any interesting stories that he might share.  The man told him the following, leaving out, of course, some of the information that was still classified:

Four missionaries were imprisoned in a country in which we don't have diplomatic ties.  The missionaries were thrown into a dungeon-like cell in the ground where they were given just enough food and water to keep them alive.  They didn't allow them any restroom facilities and the cage in the ground became very foul - like being imprisoned in a septic tank.  From time to time the guards would get bored and play cruel mind games with their captives, saying, "Hey the Americans have come to rescue you.  You are free!"  They would have them climb out of the cell and allow the missionaries to run through a field toward freedom. Then the captors would shoot above their heads and at their feet and catch them, beat them severely and throw them back in the sewerage-filled hole.

Pretty soon, the four men decided that embracing no hope was better than to have hopes that continued to be crushed time after time, not to mention the beatings. They decided that the next time they heard the guards telling them that they were free, they wouldn't believe it - they would instead kneel down, lock arms, look down and refuse to believe them.

After three years, America obtained intelligence that showed them the location of the four men and in the cover of darkness, special forces (including the man telling Acton Bowen the story) would fly in on a Blackhawk helicopter and rescue the men. Their commanders gave them 5 minutes to get in and get out.  If it took longer than that, they were to leave without the captives.

They quickly neutralized the enemy, found the cell in the ground, cut the lock off and yelled down to the captives that they were Americans and they were there to give them freedom.  The men knelt down, locked arms and wouldn't budge!  The special ops forces were stunned and pleaded with the 4 men to come quickly, but it was to no avail!  Finally, with the 5 minutes almost up, the man telling the story removed his helmet, weapons, and belt and descended into the hole.  The stench was overwhelming as he waded through human waste and bent down, getting on the captives' level, telling them, "We're Americans.  We're here to rescue you and give you freedom!"

Finally one of the men believed him.  The other 3 captives rebuked him, saying, "It's just a cruel joke. This is not real!"  The one captive said, "No, this is real.  Our captors would never do this.  Our liberator is the only one who would come down amidst our messy, vile filth and get on our level." The men were saved by their liberator and left the nasty pit of confinement and moved to freedom!

And that is exactly what Jesus did for us!

Acton Bowen with some of our Young People

YEC empowered and emboldened our Youth and the Leaders as well and all left with a renewed spirit.