We all want to be the first to do something at some point in our lives. Well, you have your chance…Be the first to sign your student up for the GAUNTLET 2008!! Registrations are up and running! Go to the NewSpring website and get all the information. It is going to be awesome and if you are a student you will not want to miss it!

I am loving the feel/look for this year! What do you think from the image above? This is a Joshua Blankenship original!! Is there anyone else out there looking forward to the GAUNTLET? Let me know who you are!!!

We have finalized the dates for Gauntlet 2008! We will be going back to the Majestic Beach Towers, Panama City Beach, FL. It is going to be an amazing trip…you don’t want to miss this year!

Here are the dates:

• Middle School: July13-18 (We will leave late on the night of the 13th!)
• High School: July 20-25 (We will leave late on the night of the 20th!)

Sign ups will be available soon, so be sure to check back here and the NewSpring website for more details.

Check out some of the stories, photos, and videos from GAUNTLET 2007: CLICK HERE!

We are back from our summer youth camp to Panama City Beach, FL. It was absolutely awesome. Here are some of the highlights from the week:

• Over 400 Students attend
• 27 Salvations
• 87 Ocean Baptisms
• 85+ Staff and Volunteers attend
• Receiving multiple compliments about the behavior of our students
• Students making an intentional effort to minister to people at a local recreation park by handing out extra arcade tokens to families and telling them about Jesus and NewSpring Church
• A young girl asking us to pray with and for her family because she saw something different in us as we were on the beach.
• Having your students pray over you at the end of the week. Perry asked the whole student ministry staff to come down to the front on Thursday Night and then asked the students if they felt lead to come and pray over the staff. It was POWERFUL and MOVING. I had one middle school student pray this over me, “God, please give Alden wisdom and knowledge as he teaches us your word.” WOW! That will mess you up in a major way!
• No major injuries on 2 sprained ankles…only 2 trips to the hospitals.
• The GREATEST thing I experienced was seeing students getting serious about allowing Jesus to CHANGE their lives. Students wanting to be a part of a revolution that will change their life, their families, their friends, their schools, their city, their state, their country, and their world!

Great things always seem to happen in the lives as students, but it is out duty to make sure that they continue to grow/build on what God showed them at camp. I am excited about it and it continues this Sunday Night at IGNITE at the 2Seven. All Middle Schoolers in the Anderson area….Be there! It is going to rock!

WOW! Try to imagine 9 charter buses driving down the road together. Let me tell you it is quite a site to see. We all arrived safely this morning with over 600 Chic-Fil-A biscuits waiting on us. All the students were a little weary after a long bus ride but very excited to get the Gauntlet started.

Yesterday was the one of the hottest days Panama City ever sees. It actually set the record high for June 11th in PCB history at 95 degrees. But that was the overall temperature–we were on the beach. The temperature there was in the neighborhood of 103. That’s hot! Don’t worry though, we were pumping plenty of water into your kids.

The first two Gauntlet challenges were pretty awesome. There’s not much better than watching 400 plus students swarm the beach in competition. Challenge highlights for the day: 15 team members attempting to get their entire team out of the sand by packing them on 2, one-square-foot platforms, and 8 teams skiing down the beach on 2×4’s.

After the challenges and free time, we headed off to Arnold Sr High School for worship. Our band and tech guys had been setting up the gear all day so that when we arrived at 8:00 we were ready to rock. The band kicked off the night with some energy-packed worship. It was awesome to see our kids sing “Our God reigns” with their fists pumped towards the sky–declaring the sovereignty of our God.

Then Perry spoke about “knowing.” He brought it hard, challenging our kids to be sure that they know who they follow. His goal for the night was to make sure that every person in the room–whether Christian, non-Christian, or somewhere in-between–knew for sure where they stood with God before they left the room. It was great to see God working in the lives of our students as many of them made decisions to give their lives to Jesus.

So that’s day one of the Gauntlet. God is already doing some amazing things in the lives of our kids and leaders! Be praying for us as we continue to pour ourselves out for the sake of God and our students, and that God would start a movement in our kids that will not be stopped–even when we get home.

The long bus ride has begun.   Check in was a lot of fun from the reports that I have received!  Just got word that the 9 bus caravan had left Anderson, SC.  They are on track to arrive on time at 8 AM!!  We will update in the morning with arrival news!  Peace!