Passion 2013

We started off the year in Atlanta serving at Passion 2013 along with Julie, KW, John and Susan.  This has become an annual event the last few years and one that I have to say starts my year off in a wonderful way. My words can not do justice for all that happens during the week with the kids, adults, the organization and Jesus.  This year we arrived New Years Eve day.  Just in time to stroll down the sidewalks with our suite cases during the LSU / Clemson parade.  For those who travel with us...it was like being in Rome.  We took the time to watch the parade which was fun.

We had to wait for a bit to get checked into our rooms so we stopped for lunch at Hooters!  This was John's 1st visit to Hooters...probably not his last!

One fun thing that happened, I thought anyway, was that we got to have a slumber party with John and Susan New Years Eve.  We could only get 1 room, at a decent price, for the night.  We watched the LSU/Clemson game that was being played just blocks from our hotel, had our wine and champagne.  We certainly did not invite KW over for a glass as we picked it up at the local wine shop across from the hotel.  They had all of maybe 3 bottles to select from.  We had fun.

We were fortunate again to get to serve as Community Group volunteers under the direction of Julie and KW.  Again, we had a wonderful group of kids in the "Silver" Community Group.  This year the kids gelled together very quickly....another God Thing as Susan would call it.

We served lunch each day to the kids in the Georgia Dome.  Amazing how efficiently this worked.  One day we served the 60K kids in 15 minutes.  They would come down from their seats, out into the corridor, pick up their Jason's Deli box and file back in the other door way and up to their seats.  This was repeated for every other section.  And then we gave them trash bags and collected all the trash so with in a hour they could get back to the sessions.

 The music was held before the kids came to us so on occasion we could attend.  It was way cool.

On the last night we all gathered outside with our candles.  Once we were all there, there was a beam of light shooting 5 miles into the sky as we shouted.  The kids and adults raised over $3M for Human Trafficking.
"Live for Jesus and free the captive".

On our final day in Atlanta, we got to hang out with Chris and Melissa.  They took us to a really neat restaurant near their new home, Canoe where we met up with Bill, her dad and girlfriend, Suzann.  It was very relaxing and peaceful with great food.  Afterwards we headed to their house and just hung out for a few hours for our flight.  All of this while the other half of the family we gathering at Jerry World for the A&M vs Oklahoma game.

A few pictures of their beautiful home.

A lovely way to end a wonderful week!