220

1- weekend
3- average hours of sleep per night
85- teenagers
220- volts it takes to restart the human heart
3,000- cans of Mountain Dew consumed

While that may sound like a normal youth retreat to you, but ours really was extraordinary. Instead of having a speaker for the weekend we had a drama as the centerpiece of the retreat. Without a lengthy explanation of the details of the drama, in essence it was about the prisons we put up around us. For each of us it is a different prison. It might be insecurity, sexual addiction, drug/alcohol addiction, self loathing, unforgiveness, or whatever else holds us back from becoming who God wants us to be.

One of the quotes that hit home was:
"Your future is not a matter of chance, it's a matter of choice"

I think this was a good wake up call for just about everyone at the retreat. You have to make choices now that will determine your future.

The most powerful part of the weekend came after the last act of the drama ended. We all went up to our rooms with our small groups and had a time of recognizing the prisons that hold us back from being all that God wants us to be. The things that hold us back from our future. After 20 minutes or so of reflection time and writing down what holds us back we all had a chance to share those things and pray with each other. It really was a moment of freedom in a lot of lives that night. It was amazing to see the awesome release that it brings when things are spoken others and then given up to God.

I'm really thankful for being able to be a part of our church's youth ministry, it's possibly the most effective ministry in our whole valley at bringing people to Christ. And it is such an amazing thing to see 150 young people every week come to a church and worship God. Alot of them, their parents are not christians, they became christians in the last year, or this is their first experience with "Church".