thoughts on amplified this past weekend

and a couple pics....

my daughter tori and my oldest son jd went to amplified this past weekend (an in-town retreat put on by hpc's student ministries. christine caine from hillsong was the speaker and they had a bunch of cool stuff for everybody to be involved in - like an outreach at a st. patrick's day parade for the high schoolers.


tori getting checked in at amplified (ok you probably can't tell which on is her - c'mon, it's just a cell phone camera


jd waiting for his friend joe david wilkerson to get checked in (the pic is upside-down because i wanted you to see what i had to go through to even get a picture of him - sneaky dad.


jp giving the high schoolers instructions before the parade outreach - "if it starts raining, DON'T RUN." sounded really funny to hear it, but actually, it was a very smart thing to tell them. jp gained a bunch of my trust with that one line.

i got to sit in on some of the closing night's wrap-up altar service. kids giving testimonies like we used to see at youth camps back in the eighties. it was really cool to see that it got beyond the cool stage (which was VERY cool) and the lights and smoke and fun and all that - those things created an environment (as they should) for people to encounter God - and they did. kids met God this weekend.

tyler (pathfinders), dr. tweeze (refuge), and all your teams - thanks for doing what you do. thanks for going the third, fourth, eighteenth and fiftieth miles for the sake of our kids.


dr. tweeze with a dude named brance who got caught up in the moment and tried to mosh his way through the sanctuary wall. the wall won, but it did take a good beating. i know we don't need to go tearing up the sanctuary, but i'm definitely glad we've got enough excitement going on here that a teenager would be dancing that hard.

i also heard a story - rumor has it that there's a video of it - about eddie guerra taking a try at stage diving that didn't work out so well.... (with tyler's voice in the background saying, "no! bad idea, bad idea.... oh man.... wow."

i guess you'll have to bug lance to get him to upload the video on his blog.