We set out on Friday morning with similar purpose as the days before. This was the smallest group we would be bringing. On Wednesday and Thursday we had nine people and this day we had only 5. Ryan had been the first two days with myself, and Amy (one of our newest leaders) had come on Thursday, and the other two guys Brian and Chris were new.

We arrived and almost immediately it was different. It was different because we were greeted by my friend Keith (who I'll blog about tomorrow). He asked if we would want Carlton to share his story with us. I didn't know Carlton, but I'm always game for hearing someone's story. We sat in a private room and heard an amazing story from Carlton and his life journey from being picked on and rejected as a kid to seeking acceptance as a teenager and college student to eventually becoming an addict to cocaine, and then his amazing recovery.

We then went downstairs to serve lunch to the residents and then to the public. With only having five people, some of us had double duty on serving, but everyone was fed, so it was all good! After lunch we helped stock their shelves that people are allowed to take 2 or 3 items from. When this was over we had Emily (the public relations coordinator) give our group a tour of the house since we didn't get to do it the day before.

After the tour we headed over the warehouse and once again bagged clothes, sorted shoes, and separated belts and bags! There was a large pile already being worked on by three of the residents of the mission and they looked relieved when we walked in. Just as we were making a dent, another truck arrived and the dumped alot more clothes into the pile! Some of our students were clearly getting tired so I just said "Ask God for some extra strength". I guess I kind of said that because I just wanted to take away any excuses to work, but a few of them did ask God for some extra help, and they told me that God did give them energy to finish! And we finished all of the clothes that were set before us!

We made our way back to the Mission, ate with the residents, said our goodbye's and came home. What a great experience we all had. It was different each day, and God moved in our students differently each day. Thanks to all of you who were praying and keeping us on the forefront of your minds! Have a great day!

Ron Foster

We set out once again for the Frederick Rescue Mission on Thursday morning. From the beginning, it just seemed different than Wednesday. For one, it was all new people except one that we would be bringing. Then when we got in our cars, one of them wouldn't start right away. We waited for about 10 minutes to be able to leave.

The first thing we did upon arrival was serve the meals. Our students jumped right in there with smiles, talking with everyone coming through and good attitudes all around! After serving the meals, and then eating ourselves, we stocked the shelves of the pantry. That went pretty quick. We headed from there over to the warehouse to bag clothes (just like yesterday). We had a little more time than the day before, but it seemed like there weren't as many clothes to bag. We were done within an hour (with 2 more hours we could have been there). Just as we finish a truckload of more clothes arrives. We were actually excited to see all the clothes so we would have some more work to do! We mowed through the clothes and bagged up everything that came in, with a half hour to spare!

We headed from there back to the mission to serve dinner to the residents. We got there and the cook (Scott) told us that there was only 2 items really to serve and that they were all impressed with how we worked in the warehouse, so they wanted us to just eat with them, and we did. It was a hard working day followed by a good meal with the residents of the mission.

This has been a great experience for our students as they get out of their comfort zone a little bit, and put others needs before their own. Continue to pray for us as we head out again on Friday with a different group! Have a great day!

Ron Foster

This morning a handful of us set out from the church to Frederick, Maryland. It seemed like an unlikely place to be heading to serve meals to the homeless and recovering addicts, but away we went. After getting oriented with the facility (the former Frederick County Prison dating back to the late 1800's), we began stocking the pantry shelves with lots of baked items such as cakes, loaves of bread, pies, potato chips, and cookies. Almost every shelf was filled. There was so much food! This was going to be food that as those receiving meals would come in, they would be allowed to pick several items from the shelves to take with them as they left. I couldn't imagine that much of it would get taken, but we stocked them full just the same.

We began serving meals to the approximately 25 residents of the mission, and then we opened the doors to feed the homeless. The numbers were staggering. They kept coming and coming. They told us that there were between 150 to 200 people that came through! When it was all over, we walked down the pantry aisle that we had stocked so full and to our shock, discovered that it was vacant of most of the food we had just put on these shelves. I mean, they were bare!

We headed to the Mission's warehouse after lunch to help bag and sort clothes. We made our way through piles of clothes and were able to finish up all of the clothes that were there for that day. It gave our students a real sense of accomplishment to be able to finish out all of the clothes in there. To close the day we headed back to the mission and served dinner to the residents. Needless to say, our students were wiped out on the way home, but the experiences and conversations they had today were priceless. I can't wait to bring the new crew of students in the morning to allow them to experience it all over again! Keep praying for us this week!

Ron Foster

So we had a full day on Thursday! After our morning game times, devotions with each other, morning service, and lunch we started getting ready for the day. Some of the group headed out for some paintball (the whole group originally was going to go, but then got scared when they realized they might get shot) and the rest of the group started prepping for our flour fight! That's right, I said flour fight. In case you don't know, a flour fight is when everyone gets soaked, then gets their own bag of flour. We say go, and it's every man for himself reaching in the bag pulling out heaps of flour and throwing it at everyone else. Don't worry, I captured alot of this on tape, so you'll get to see some of it.

After dinner we got ready for the evening service which was very powerful and went an incredible 4 hours! Our students were ready to keep singing at the end even! It just goes to show you that teenagers will listen and participate! We had a great time as a church sharing decisions and burdens. For some of these students, they were able to get some stuff off of their chest that had been burdening them for years and hadn't spoken out loud. What a great thing to share the load of your burdens with Jesus and with other Christians!

After our car ride home, we made it safe. This camp proved to be what we hoped it would...a catalyst for our students to begin taking their relationship with God for real! Now they're ready to put it into practice! Let's make sure as a church to come alongside of them and help them along with their journey! Thanks for praying! Thanks for supporting!

Ron Foster

Did I forget to mention that our group is HILARIOUS? So, at camp we have different teams for spirit points. They are simply broken up by color. Churches will typically come with lots of clothes and things to go along with their color for spirit. Our kids? Oh no. They have to take that one step further. A couple of days before camp, most of them gathered at my house to come up with some special themes that they would dress like during camp. Monday night they had a black out night because we had made shirts that were black so they just said let's make all of our clothes, black. Ok, I get that. But then Tuesday night they decided to make that "Formal" night. Yeah, formal night. Like I'm going to a sweet 16 party or prom! So we had our kids decked out on Tuesday night. Everyone thought it was great! But then last night, we topped it. Our kids had decided to make it Cowboys and Indians night! Yeah. So we had a whole lot of cowboys and cowgirls and one Indian (Maureen). The rest of camp was basically saying, "why didn't we think of that?" Our kids are awesome!

Last night was a very challenging, but needed message. Our speaker spoke that if we are saturating ourselves with God and His Word and in communication with Him in prayer, then we won't need any gimicks or motivation to go and tell people about Jesus. Telling people about Jesus will just start coming out of us because we've been filled up with Him, and now it is overflowing. Our students were really challenged with this as was I, and plan on coming back and challenging the rest of our church with this. What a great night! I hope you'll tune in with us at 10am and 7pm today at www.liftstudentministries.com to watch us live!

Ron Foster

Last night the service was amazing! I got some texts from some of our church members telling me they were watching online! That's pretty cool! The topic was RUN using Jonah as an example. We looked at it from a different perspective than normal, not focusing on the great fish, but rather on Jonah himself and how he was running from God, but could never outrun God. We had two from our group that prayed to receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior and stop running from God!

When the service was over, we went to do some serious roller skating. All I gotta say is that a 32 year old youth pastor, a 31 year old intern, and a (we don't know the age and we're not asking) southern belle outlasted ALL of our teenagers out on the rink! I mean, seriously, come on. How are these teenagers gonna let us show them up like that?

It's been a great Wednesday so far. Service and our group times were good. We've had kind of a lazy afternoon, hitting up some swimming and then relaxation with the rain and thunderstorms on us. I can't wait to see what God wants to do tonight! It's gonna be great! Make sure to watch us online at www.liftstudentministries.com at 7pm tonight!

Ron Foster

So far we've had an adventure filled day! Let's see, we got up bright and early to head to breakfast followed immediately by what we call "Morning Fun" time. For this, the camp gathers in the auditorium to scream and shout for their teams, and win points for their teams by doing stupid, funny games. What's great about that is that I get to run the games! We had students squirting alka-seltzer tablets that were taped to each other's foreheads, scream to see who could get the loudest decibals, peel a banana with their feet and then eat the banana, eat a blowpop as fast as they can and blow a bubble, blow up a balloon until it pops with their nose, and some fun racing games around the auditorium!

Devon was our balloon guy and almost had it blown up, but then he dropped it and lost the lead. Kenneth ended up eating the banana.

Our speaker, Aaron Cavin is doing a great job. You know, it's funny. Aaron and I were in college together, and I never thought he was really going to make it in ministry, but he has been doing an incredible job, and God is using him so much to make an impact on our students!

We hit lunch, then had a team for volleyball. They fought a good fight, but fell in defeat in the end. It was all good though, because there was makeshirft waterslide on campus. We got muddy and wet. It was great! Maureen, Hailey, Eric, Devon, Will and I sure were a mess when leaving that place! In the mean time, the rest of the group made use of the movie room eating popcorn and having fun. We're now relaxing a little bit before dinner, then service, and some roller skating tonight! Make sure to watch us online at www.liftstudentministries.com at 7pm tonight! We're having a great time! Talk to you later!

Ron Foster

Our high school students met at the church this morning to leave for camp. We set out on a nice little road trip to go just north of Philadelphia to LIFT camp at Philadelphia Biblical University. We had a great trip up here, and finally made it!

These guys had a great time exploring the campus figuring out what they wanted to do during the day. After dinner, we headed to the evening service. It was great to see our teens enjoying the presence of God through singing and through the message.

We ended up doing a little bit of bowling this evening for the late night activity. Now that we're back, I'm falling asleep as I type this. So with that being said, I bid you all a good night, and I'll see you tomorrow!

Ron Foster

We got up Friday morning did the breakfast thing, the getting ready thing, the clean up cabin thing, and pack the vans thing. I always tell our leaders we bring with us that spending one week of camp with our students is worth one year's worth of relationship building. Our leaders were awesome. We brought Matt Toeneboehn and Maureen Cook. Everywhere the students went, they went. After the long journey home, our leaders were definitely exhausted, but also very fulfilled. They had just as much fun as the students did, and they got an opportunity to lead and share. I'll just share that they came through with flying colors. If you see them around church, make sure to let them know it too!

So camp is over now. We're home. We've all come back a little different then the way we went. The fun has just begun, and I can't wait to see how the group will continue the friendships and the decisions they made in the days ahead. Thank you parents for trusting us with your kids. I hope you were able to get some rest while they were away as well! Make sure to check back in to this blog from time to time as we do more then just the camp blog here. Have a great day guys!

Ron Foster

Thursday is the last full day of camp. Everyone knows this, so we try to get the most out of our day. The day started out in it's typical way: Wake up, Breakfast, Shower, Morning Service, Small Group Time. In our morning service, we talked about Superman being the Man of Steel that can deflect bullets from his chest. We related that to how it's not so easy for us to deflect words from hurting us and our words hurting others. We had some good discussion as a youth group on this.

Following this, we headed to the Rec Room for our annual Carpetball Tournament. If you don't know what carpetball is, catch me later because it's too complicated to explain here. I'll just say it's really easy to play, and really fun. Because it's so easy, practically the whole camp plays! It was pretty cool seeing the whole camp in our Rec Room at the same time!

After lunch we had our big group games. The girls' game was so funny. They had 4 soccer balls covered in shaving cream that they had to run with and try to get into these buckets. Then, the ball would get covered in shaving cream again! These girls were covered in shaving cream, it was awesome! The guys were playing some serious dodgeball up in the gym. It was funny to see some of their tactics of staying in the game, like hiding in the corner and making themselves seem like they weren't in the game. Good times.

After the big group games were over, the real game began. I challenged our girls bball team to a 1 on 3 game. If they won, I would take our whole group for some cold drinks. If I won, they would babysit for us! Without getting into much detail, it ended up with me driving our group to get some cold drinks. :(

The night's service was awesome as usual. We saw several students come forward for decisions at the end of the service. My favorite part came next where we could take our kids for some recap time of sharing. Our students shared with each other the decisions that they had made this week. There were some hugs, some tears, and some giggles. Right after this, we did this thing I simply call "Compliments" where the students can go around and share a compliment with one of the other people in the group. This ended up being one of the longest sessions of this that I've ever done. It wasn't because they had so much to say, but because some of them couldn't make up their minds who they wanted to compliment (Brooke and Charlie), some others couldn't stop laughing (Morgan and Erin), and others couldn't stop crying (Katie). All in all it was a great night though!

The rest of the night was a bonfire where as a camp they could share decisions with each other and some late night ice cream and dodgeball in the gym. Our kids eventually got to sleep, but it was indeed a great night of camp!

Ron Foster