Good News Across America

For two weeks (July 13th-28th) I have had the opportunity to be in Denver, Colorado for an event called Good News Across America (GNAA). I traveled with a group of about 20 people from Oregon, and when we got there Monday the 15th we were broken into teams of 4 or 5 mixed with other people from all over America.

Our Oregon Team

My 4 team mates were from: Nevada, Missouri, Kansas, and another Oregonian. We were all different ages and all had different skill levels.
The first week we spent the time preparing. We did team building time; we prayed together; and we talked about how the week was going to work. We had some free time; we took a train to the top of Pikes Peak; we visited our cousins that live in Denver; and we hung out. We also attended classes; we learned more about how to share the gospel; how to run our clubs; and we learned more about being safe in Denver. On Thursday we hit the streets and each team headed to their partnering church. Our church was conducting three 5-Day clubs, essentially back-yard Vacation Bible Schools. We went out to the three locations and prayed for the children to come and also went out and invited people to come. 

My GNAA Team 

The second week was crazy. We left at 8:30 and headed to our first club. Our first and second club were in parks. We would get there, set up, play games with the kids that were there, and then we would start club. Our first club had about 30 kids the first day (which was a real shock), our second club had about 15, and the last club was at the church itself and it had about 30 as well. At the end of the day we had reached 84 kids. It was pretty awesome.
On Friday we had our rally; a rally is a big party at the church for all the kids from all the clubs to bring their families and show them what they have been learning. The rally was also a way for the church to reach out to the families and invite them to come to church. Throughout the whole week we had volunteers from the church helping us teach, the idea was a sort of handing off the baton; we came in and showed them how to run a club and then we ask them to keep going after we left. During the week we had the volunteers

GNAA Team 

help lead games, give out prizes, lead smaller parts of club (like rules, Word Up, teaching on prayer and such), and build a relationship with the kids. The rally was the big finish where we really handed everything over to them. 
After the rally all the teams gathered back at headquarters and we had a time of sharing the work that God had done that week. Our church reached about 130 kids and had about 6 salvation decisions. When it was all said and done, 2,710 people  were reached and 272 of them made salvation decisions. 
The next morning we packed up and headed home.