Wednesday, April 26, 2017

First Class Sunday May 2017


You are invited to join us for our May First Class Sunday on Mental Health Awareness: Helping parents understand mental health as it relates to their children and teens. We are excited to welcome, Jennifer Wilson, Fulton County School Counselor, as our First Class Sunday speaker. We will meet in Alderman Hall, May 7, 2017 from 9:45-10:45 a.m. This time together will help equip and support parents in their awareness of mental health issues and offer resources to guide them in dealing with mental health with their children. This is such an important topic and will be an excellent opportunity for learning and discussion in a supportive community. Hope you can attend!

Thursday, April 6, 2017

Family Mission Trip 2017 Part 2



I cannot believe this week is almost over! The Family Mission Trip 2017 has flown by, but you know what they say, time flies when you’re having fun! That has certainly been true for our time together this week; we have worked hard and played hard! 


Wednesday, we served at a local assisted living facility in Brunswick by having a car wash for the residents. We loved meeting the residents and help them by cleaning their cars. Our students and families were rock stars while washing the cars, paying attention to the smallest details so that they could to do their very best for the residents.  We left the work site and spent the afternoon having lunch in the park and exploring Fort Frederica on St. Simon’s. It is a gorgeous place filled with history. The kids loved dressing up in colonial outfits and checking out all of the cool areas of the fort.


Thursday morning, we had a special opportunity to tour the beautiful and historic Christ Church, and then we went to serve at Magnolia Manor, a nursing home we have come to know and love over the past several years. We did arts and crafts, painted nails, sang songs together, and visited with patients in their rooms. There is something so powerful about seeing many generations of people sharing with one another and loving one another. My favorite moment of the morning was when one of the residents requested her favorite song, Jesus Loves Me, and every single person, from the youngest to the oldest, belted it out with all their hearts. After our time at Magnolia Manor, we spent the afternoon at Pier Village enjoying the beach, climbing the 128 stairs of the light house, shopping, and playing on the playground. Before heading back to Epworth for the night, we stopped for dinner at one of the top rated BBQ restaurants in the south, Southern Soul BBQ, and it was delicious!


During our big group times each evening, we continued with our theme for the week, Come to the Water. Wednesday night, we focused on John 14:27 and Philippians 4:7. We talked about how water can often be peaceful or give us moments of peace. We shared with each other about times it can be hard to have peace or a peaceful moment in our world. There is a lot of chaos and craziness. It seems like there are more people that don’t get along than there are people that can get along with each other. But Jesus tells us that even though the world isn’t peaceful, we can still find peace in Jesus. He tells us that He is in charge of the whole world, so we don’t have to be afraid. We know that even when life is hard or difficult, Jesus is with us, so we can have peace.


We continued discussing this Thursday night and recapped what we learned all week. We talked about how just like water, God gives us life, cleanses us, and gives us peace. Yet, there are also times that water is so powerful that it can be scary like in a bad storm. During our big group time, we read the story of Jesus and his disciples being caught in a bad storm while they were traveling by boat. We were reminded that even in life when we feel scared or overwhelmed like the disciples felt in the storm, Jesus is with us. Sometimes we are like the disciples in the story we read and think that God is not paying attention to the storm and we get scared, but this Bible story reminds us that that God is with us, God won’t ever leave us, we can trust God, and God is more powerful than the storm or hard time. We ended our last group time with special prayer stations for each family to do together.


Everyone was sad when our time was over for the night. We had such a fantastic week and I have loved seeing how God has worked in our families in awesome ways this week! I’m already looking forward to next year!


Here are a few pictures of our awesome team from the past two days!



















Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Family Mission Trip 2017



We have had an incredible first couple of days on the Family Mission Trip!  

Monday, everyone arrived on St. Simon’s safe and sound despite the crazy weather that many of our team braved to get here. We had dinner together and our first big group time. During big group, we played games, worshiped, and introduced our theme for this week which is Come to the Water. We will be looking at several stories in the Bible that remind us that Jesus is like living water and when we believe in Him, he gives us life, cleanses us, and gives us peace. We are also learning how when we believe in Jesus, the gifts that he gives us flow out of us, so that we may show His light and love to others. 

Monday night we talked specifically about John 7:37-39. In this scripture, Jesus speaks of living water and says that anyone who believes in Him will have the gift of living water flowing through them. This is a symbol to help us understand that just like we need physical water to live, when we believe in Jesus, he will give us life forever We ended our night with family devotion time and then games all together.

Today, we woke up bright and early. After breakfast, we met together for our morning energizer and prayer. Then we set out to serve with Keep Golden Isles Beautiful by cleaning up debris under the local causeway to keep it from getting into the marsh where it could harm wildlife. We talked about how God calls us to care for creation. Everyone worked so hard, and our group cleaned up both the east and the west side of the causeway.

Following our mission work, we spent the afternoon rest of the afternoon at the beach and in Pier Village. We were blessed with a beautiful day even though the forecast had us bracing for the worst!

Tonight, we had a super fun big group time. We played Sponge Shower Hot Potato which had everyone laughing and several people needing a towel! Then Drew led us in worship and taught us some new songs that we loved. The kids shared about how they saw God during the day and it was special to hear how they saw God present with us during every aspect of our day.

The scripture for today was 1 John 1:7 and we talked about how in the same way that water cleans us, Jesus cleans us up from our sin which means when we mess up and we ask God for forgiveness, we will be clean and forgiven.

The trip is off to a great start and I am looking forward to the next few days. I know God is going to continue to be at work in powerful ways!

Enjoy some pictures from our trip so far!