50 Good Shepherd Members Headed to National Youth Gathering

Bless & Send the Travelers

Join us for worship on Sunday, June 24th at 6:00 at Verona. During this time we will be blessing our travelers and their journey. A blessing is part of the net that will hold this experience and this community. Even if this is not your usual worship time, consider coming and being a part of this important experience.

Snacks are a great way to keep our bellies and hearts full! IF you would like to send some snacks (homemade or otherwise) with us, we would LOVE that! All snack donations should be dropped off at either campus this Sunday! If you want to include a note for the kids – that’s just great!

Traveling can most certainly be a holy experience and we look forward to meeting Christ in unexpected ways on our journey. Trips like these are often transformative “Mountain Top” experiences and we need moments like that – just as the first disciples did. But the majority of our journey is lived here, in the ordinary, messy, lovely place we call home.

How to Follow the Journey

Consequently we work hard to connect this mountain top and all that the kids experience and learn and become back to our individual and communal walk back home.
Here are some ways we tie the gathering back to our life here.

• Each traveler as an assigned prayer partner in our congregation who will pray for them daily according to the requests and concerns of that traveler! They are also sending notes to encourage the kids on the journey.
• The theme of the gathering is “This Changes Everything” so we have asked pastors and key youth leaders to write a morning devotion for us in which they a story about how God used some experience or relationship or moment to change their lives.
• Former GS youth have sent in a host of letters to read to the kids on the bus. These letters are rich with advice and wisdom and all full of humor and joy. A great demonstration of how trips like this reach into our future lives.
• Each day one of our travelers will write a blog post for the church website and Facebook page so you can hear about our journey and pray for those things we are experiencing.

These young people are excited, nervous, prepared and ALMOST packed. Thank you for making this journey possible through your generosity and love. We look forward to sharing with you over time what we learned on this trip up the mountain and the journey back down.