Saturday, June 23, 2012

CIY Picture of the Day (BONUS): Saturday!

Alright...

One more day...

So many good pictures.  And so many great people to include.  But I've gotta do this one.

I didn't do this week alone.  I had some incredible help.  My wife, Jackie, made her return to the summer trip team this year after taking last summer off.  Sue was back for her second year. 




Plus... couldn't have done it without my muscle... Terril and Tim... who helped me corral the boys into bed and taught some great D-Group lessons.  






Donna... who took almost 700 pictures during the week.  Most of those you've enjoyed on here and others you can view on my Facebook page or our Youth Ministry's page.  

And last, but certainly not least, Jordyn who made her first appearance on the summer trip team.  These guys did an incredible job connecting, encouraging, challenging, praying for and helping our students have an incredible week.

Thanks team!
You guys rock!

JC




Friday, June 22, 2012

A little Friday Fun... Cadbury Eyebrows (official version)



Enjoy! It's Friday!

JC



CIY Picture of the Day: Friday


Today, being the last day of the CIY picture of the day series on my blog, I thought I'd share the official 2012 CIY Group picture.  I love this picture!  It's an amazing place to take a picture.  It is about halfway out to Laurel Falls on the Appalachian trail near Elizabethton, TN.  Love it!

JC


Thursday, June 21, 2012

CIY Picture of the Day: Thursday



In keeping with this week-long series, there is one thing that I love (maybe the most) about CIY Move... it's the relationships that are established and built up during the week. 

These pictures feature girls and guys... graduated seniors and incoming freshman... kids from four different school districts (Zanesville HS, Tri-Valley, West Muskingum, & Maysville). 

And they are all playing together... enjoying each other's presence.  Without this week of conference, these kids would never have hung out at the pool. 







Splashed around... 

And had fun together. 

Love it!

JC



Wednesday, June 20, 2012

CIY Picture of the Day: Wednesday

I'm going to cheat a bit in today's CIY picture of the day... because the picture is actually from Thursday night.  But I'm going to throw it in on Wednesday because I already have Thursday's picture picked out. 

One of the great things about this week of conference was the worship.  Brandon Grissom, from Willow Creek, did an incredible job leading the students in worship all week.  Thursday night, when this picture was taken, was a night dealing with forgiveness.  Each of the students wore a white shirt with a red piece of paper tapes to the shirt reminding them of something that they needed to be forgiven for or something that someone needed to forgive them for.  During the service (at this very point), they were challenged to talk to someone about what was written on their paper.  Only after talking with someone about their issue of forgiveness could they remove their paper. 

But I love this picture because of the white shirts... in the dark room, you can see all the students! 



Tuesday, June 19, 2012

CIY Picture of the Day: Tuesday

Continuing in my week-long series of some images from CIY Move last week, here is Alex digging into some morning encounter time. 

Every year, as we are beginning the week of conference, we ask the students some form of this question: "Why have you come this week to CIY?"  Answers usually vary... but almost always, this answer pops up more than any other: "I've drifted from my relationship with God and I need to get back." 

It's a natural occurrence.  School, sports, friends, girlfriends/boyfriends, homework, part-time jobs, families and much more begin to crowd in on the time that students have to dedicate to God every day.

CIY makes space for rekindling that fire.  Every day our students had 20 minutes to dig into a morning devotion, some Scripture and an opportunity to reconnect with God one on one... just as Abraham, Moses, Elijah and Jesus had on a regular basis.

JC



Monday, June 18, 2012

CIY Picture of the Day: Monday

Back in the day... like 5-8 years ago... I would try to post 8-10 pictures from our CIY trip to my blog.  I would give a brief description of what was happening in the photo and give parents, leaders at our church and anyone who was regular to my blog an idea of what was happening at CIY. 

Since Facebook has made sharing of pictures so much easier and digital cameras have made it so much easier to take pictures, posting a few pictures to my blog every day didn't seem realistic... especially when you're too tired to sit up straight. 

Since I've got about 900 pictures from this week (thanks to Donna, Sue, Jordyn and Terril), I thought I would go through and pick a picture or two from each day to share with a little description of why I like this picture so much. 

Up first: Monday. 
With the conference being in Knoxville, the drive time from Zanesville to Knoxville would have been a little tough for one day.  So Sunday night we traveled to Johnson City, TN and stayed at a friend's church.  With some extra time on Monday, we visited the Appalachian trail and Laurel Falls.  There are a couple of great things about this part of the trip. 

First, most of these kids have never been out in the woods like this.  There are some incredible views (my wife Jackie and one of our juniors Reagan are enjoying one here).  So it gets them out of their element a bit. 

Second, it's an opportunity to begin to build some relationships and step outside of their comfortable cliques of friends.  I don't know what it is... but when we unload the vans and start to head out, kids begin to talk to one another and walk with different folks and hang with different people.  It's quite unexplainable.  But it happens.

And it's crucial to the week!

Plus it just makes for some great pictures!

JC