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Dear Parents,

We are in Lucedale! After a brief morning session of worship and reflecting on the week, we headed out. We made great time and have arrived at our Holiday Inn after a smooth trip. Some of the kids are swimming and we’re going to turn in a while and rest up for a our last day of travel. We plan to leave around 8 a.m. which should put us into Dallas around 6:30 p.m. or so. We will ask your students to text you when we get to Shreveport with a closer arrival time estimate.

I am amazed at how well-behaved and harmonious this group has been. They have done an excellent job and have fully participated in this camp experience. We have not had one significant disciplinary issue. It has been a pleasure to spend time getting to know these students and we are excited to see how God will continue to work in this group when we arrive back in Dallas.

Please pray for safety on our last day and we look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

Chris Barker on behalf of the Youth Leadership Team.

So … as irony would have it, this e-mail has been sitting in my Outbox for an hour and a half because the router went down due to a power outage as soon as I hit ‘send’. Someone hit a pole and knocked the power out for 4 miles around us and we’ve been in the dark for that period of time. So, our trip wasn’t as smooth as we thought at the initial writing of this e-mail. All is well now and we are once again setting about getting to bed!

Dear Parents,

We are finishing up our last full day at camp. It’s been a great week. We’ve watched this group connect with each other and open up to God as they have engaged in passionate worship, been exposed to incredible stories of God’s work in many parts of the world, and listened to some of the most gifted communicators in this country teach them the Word of God. I think the person coming back to you will be significantly different than the person who left you on Sunday. I know I am.

This update covers a lot so I’m going to bullet point what we’ve been through yesterday and today.

· Yesterday morning – We heard from the founder of “To Write Love on Her Arms” which is a non-profit group that was born from a powerful story and has been used to help over 170,000 people with depression since its inception in 2006.
· Yesterday evening – Andy Stanley taught from 2 Kings 25 about the life of Zedekiah and the consequences of rebellion. Bottom Line: Rebellion against the proper authorities in our life results in pain. It always has negative consequences.
· This morning – Justin Bieber’s mom shared about the life of rejection she had until Christ found her and gave her a new identity. At the time, she was pregnant out of wedlock. Becoming a Christian helped her see that she should not consider abortion as an option so she carried the baby to term and you know the rest of the story.
· This evening, we head from Judah Smith who spoke from Ephesians 2 and Luke 19. He explained how Zacchaeus went from a casual observer of Jesus to a person who realized Jesus was all he needed. We were reminded that Jesus is more than enough for all that we need. We had an extended time of worship in response to the message we heard.

It has been an incredible week. We have one final session tomorrow morning and will head out at around 11:00 a.m. We should arrive in Lucedale, MS around 8:00 p.m. and we hope to send you a quick update from there.

Chris Barker on behalf of the Youth Team.

During our week at BigStuf, Chris Barker and myself will be giving daily updates from camp. Check back here at this site for those updates!

www.brettmeredith.com