Dnow 2011 Recap

Dnow 2011 has come and gone. This year’s theme was “Heart & Sole”. We wanted students to know how to Love God with their heart, soul, and mind- and love their neighbor as themselves. I’m glad to say that our students grasped that! We had 480 students register and 120 college leaders join an amazing band the Casey Darnell Band and our speaker Jared Herd for such an impactful weekend. We started off the weekend with a dance crew you might have seen on T.V. named RemoteKontrol:

We heard some amazing music by Casey Darnell. Consider purchasing some of his music to keep you in the Dnow spirit! We also had the honor of having Jared Herd come and bring us the messages. He truly spoke to us, all of us, and God used him in so many ways. Thank you, Jared. We had the pleasure of playing some fun upfront games, watching our very own Chad and Cary become DJ’s, and students loved catching the Frisbees thrown out at the beginning sessions.

Our focus of the weekend was that we would learn to become the hands and feet of Christ. We had the opportunity to serve on Saturday afternoon. Here’s what we did:

• 6th graders stayed on campus to help move and organize the donations from our homeless ministry. They also made prom kits for the foster care foundation along with making valentines cards to give to our mission sites.
• 7th graders went all over! They threw a Valentines party for the Angel Closet ministry, they went to many of the assisted care facilities around the area to assist with everything from playing bingo and singing to making and hand-delivering valentines cards carnations, and they did music therapy with them.
• 8th Graders went to help out St. Phillip UMC. They went to throw the neighborhoods around them a Valentines Carnival, and they also passed our Valentines out to the surrounding area.
• 9th Graders went to Safe House Ministries and to two different parks in downtown Atlanta to love on the homeless.
• 10th graders went under the bridges of Atlanta to personally go make contact with homeless. They passed out firewood, toiletry kits and provided lunches.
• 11th Graders went down to Emory and worked with an inner-city program that tries to get at-risk kids the education and support they need in order to not become a statistic. They played sports with them.
• 12th Graders had a very interesting challenge. We told them to just go out and love on people here in East Cobb- they had to figure out what that looked like. Our students blew us away! They helped carry bags for people at Wal-Mart and put notes on cars in parking lots. They also went and pooled their own money together, bought hotdogs, went and grilled them at East Cobb park, and handed them out for free.

All in all, our Saturday afternoon was slam-packed with lots of students and college leaders (600+ to give you a picture) going around our community and loving their neighbor as themselves. We also partnered with three organizations over the weekend to raise the awareness of the needs of peoples’ feet around the globe:

We partnered with Orphan Relief and Rescue. They are an organization out of Liberia, Africa that meets the needs of orphans. We wanted to raise money to buy shoes for orphans there. At $125 for a barrel of about 50 shoes, we set our goal to reach 15 barrels donated. We had 6 barrels donated!

SIFAT is another organization we partnered with. They are a leadership training organization that works with many countries. We had some Bolivians make us tire sandals for $25 (and still have some if you would like). We also are going there this summer for our rising 7-9 grade mission trip. We would love for you to join us.

Soles for Souls is the third organization we worked with this year. They are an organization that delivers used shoes all over the world. We had this crazy vision of a pile of 3,000 pairs of shoes. We asked students to donate shoes and we counted Sunday afternoon and we have 1,850 pairs of shoes going to people that need shoes!

God was so good to us this weekend.

For Saturday Night we had a dance party where students’ family groups all dressed up and came as a dance crew. To put a spin on the evening, we asked them to invite their friends to join them in dressing up and then attend the session with them. We had over 100 guests that night.

After the dance party, we had our session. With all now 700+ people, it was an electric atmosphere. By the time Jared came up, the crowd was still in ‘party mode’. Jared spoke to the students exactly where they were and through the message really made the room contemplative. The students began to see who God really was and what the Cross really stood for. Jared put emphasis on following God daily and not just believing once. The most impactful part of the weekend was when he started to get the students to raise their hands if they wanted to come to know God personally and for the students that were Christians that they would follow Jesus. We had an amazing response from the students. God moved in incredible ways.

Sunday morning came so fast. We gathered for our last session of the weekend along with parents and congregation. We had around 1,200 people fill up the CAC and finish up the weekend!

Thanks again to:

• Jared Herd and the Casey Darnell band for their roles in leading students this weekend.
• Cindy Hudon for all of her hard work organizing our volunteers.
• Our amazing Host homes and host home helpers, we couldn’t do it without you.
• College Leaders! Need I say more?
• All of our volunteers that helped behind the scenes, cleaning and driving.
• Our Media department
• Our maintenance crew
• Our nurse, Meredith Morton
• Our amazing staff team

But most of all, thanks to God for what He did this weekend. All glory, honor, and praise go to Him.

Justin Smith