I told you about Rachel Kent in the last blog. Bigstuf host lots of incredible students who exemplify a wonderful spirit even in the midst of the hardest of times. Rachel is one of those students.
This is a bit of her story.

At camp we ask people to write letters to us to let us know about students who are here who have been through the worst of times and yet still seem to shine a light beyond the darkness of their circumstances. These are the some of the most meaningful times of my life.
Last week I got a letter about a girl named Rachael. The letter was from a youth leader explaining what happened to her and how as she lay on a hospital bed, unable to move, and with almost no hope of ever walking again, she stated that she knew God was going to use this somehow. He said she was the kind of student that every youth minister hoped to have in his group and talked about her vibrance and influence.
I knew she had been to Bigstuf the year before in a wheelchair and we had prayed for her as she sat in that chair out in the audience. This year,from the stage, i surprised Rachael and asked her in the middle of the session to come up to the stage. She walked up to the stage and i helped her come up the stairs and she began to tell her story. A car had run over her and crushed her spine and the doctors gave her a two percent chance of ever walking again. As she told her story, she stopped in the middle and looked at the audience and said….I JUST WALKED UP ON THIS STAGE AND I NEVER THOUGHT I’D BE ABLE TO DO THAT!!! She lost it for a second and so did i. Heck, i am crying just typing this story. Rachael is one of the many students whose story has impacted lives in a huge way. some of the stories are like Rachaels and they display God’s love and grace as He healed. Many of them are stories of hope and light and life in the middle of God healing the soul and not the body.
I stand in awe and often in tears as God uses so many teenagers like Rachael and Jessie, and others whom i hope to write about, to show us who God is even in the midst of pain and unanswered questions.
I would love for you to hear this story in Rachael’s own words, so be looking for a video coming up soon so you can see and hear the heart of this inspiring young lady.

Never knew that when i started blogging a month ago that there would be so many stories that i really thought were worth telling. I get lots of notes from you saying you are sitting in your kitchen crying or in a coffee shop looking for kleenex. As i mentioned in the first post, I hope i can offer an opportunity for you to think ….to laugh….to cry….to see God doing things that make life on this planet have some meaning. He has been in the middle of the poignant stories of Jack and Jessie and I am sure he smiled along with a lot of us one night a few weeks ago at Bigstuf. Watch this.

I mentioned in the last post that at Bigstuf we ask students to write letters about people they want to call or people whose circumstances are displaying God’s love.
So…words can’t do justice to the night that Zack melted everyone’s heart. Here is a bit of the rest of the night.
It was the birthday of a young lady named Heather. She had celebrated that without her dad on birthdays number 15 and 16 the past two years. This year you could sense the excitement in her handwriting as she explained that her dad was back from Iraq and was even “right here” in Panama City at her favorite place, Bigstuf. She was here with her Hero…her dad. All i did was read a few lines from the letter before i got to the part where everyone knew her dad had been in Iraq and as they came to meet me in the center of the room, the roar of 1500 voices boomed in celebration for this man who served our country and for his daughter who held him close and cried as we celebrated with the two of them. To make it a better “bigstuf moment”, Davis, our keyboard player who is actually a trombone wonder, played happy birthday on the trombone while everyone sang.
A cool moment for a lot of people and especially for a dad and his daughter who had all she needed or wanted for her 17th birthday.
Shortly thereafter we called a mom and her daughter to the stage. They were a bit nervous having not been warned this was coming but ….we shared with this mom the letter her daughter had written about her….”the hero mom”. She hadn’t served in Iraq, but she served here in life as she watched her friends and family lose their lives in various ways. Over a very short period of time this wonderful mother had watched 8 people whom she was very close to leave this world to go to the next. Just a few weeks before this mom was called when her son had rolled his car but miraculously lived to avoid being number nine on this heartbreaking list. Katelyn, the daughter, held her moms hand as we prayed over this family that God would lessen the pain. And indeed, the pain became less when her mom listened to the words her daughter had written “she is an amazing mother, person, and friend and she has proven that you can make it through anything when your relationship with God is right”
Mom and daughter made it through a few emotional moments on the stage at Bigstuf and showed 1500 people a glimpse of how God gives hugs and kisses when we are hurt.

A few stories worth publishing tonight. I collect stories from students at Bigstuf. All kinds.
Here is what happened tonight. A dad wrote me a note about how proud he was of his 7 year old son.
Son’s name is Zack. Zack was at camp last year and heard the stories about how people are dying all over the world because of a lack of clean water. The note i got explained how Zack went home and started selling bottles of water to try to make enough money to send over to Africa to build a well.
You don’t normally think about a 7 year old boy following thru on such a big task. Here is the deal.
The kid kept at it. Sold water at his church, at his grand parents church , in his front yard, and kept on going til he made $3300. I didn’t know it when i stood in the audience and read the letter, but Zack was back. After i read what his dad had written there was excitement in the back of the auditorium and the cutest little kid you can imagine came and stood beside me at the center of the auditorium. I asked him why he did it. He just said something to the effect of “people need help”
A seven year old boy just saved the lives of over a thousand people.
What have you been doing?
I had three more stories but i think each one of these needs to stand alone now…so think about this one today. i will tell you more later.
lanny

I mentioned the song Oh how he loves us in the earlier blog today….which…if you just read the top one here you are missing out. Go watch Jessie’s video.
So I thought i would put the song here for you to hear the way we did it on our cd this year.
By the way ….don’t rip it off here. go buy it. It’s just a powerful song. And Mandy Miller is incredible singing it.
And, Jessie this is dedicated to you.
Words follow…click arrow to play.

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He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realise just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

We are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
So Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss,
And the heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about, the way…

He loves us….

It’s the stories of the lives of people and how they intersect with God that allow us to open our eyes and see beyond our own little universe to something that can transform us .
Jessie’s story is like that. Every time I talk to her i am reminded of His light and warmth and glory.
Below is part of Jessie’s Story on a video. Her story also is echoed in the words of the
song Oh How He Loves…
“When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realise just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.”
We are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
So Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss,
And the heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about, the way…
He Loves Us…”
Watch this…

Some of you are now coming here because you know there are stories that are happening that can’t be made up. Well i guess we could make’m up but …here is another great God thing from today.
Standing on stage i held up three Compassion packets and asked if anyone wanted to just come up and take them and sponsor a child. ( not your ordinary way to do that) Three people came up and i sensed that one of them should be the one we surprised today. She took the packet of a little boy named James. i informed her that sometimes we like to call the lady in Kenya who is director of the projects and let her know that one more child just got sponsored. This young lady was very poised and seemed anxious to go along with me and do this skype video call. Susan is the lady in Kenya who answered and i introduced her to the young lady and asked Susan if she knew little James in that project.
She said yes. I asked her when was the last time she saw james. ( this was all a set up) She said she just saw him.
All this is going on up on the video screens in front of 1500 people.
Susan moved out of the screen and little James’ face showed up right on the screen. The girl on stage who had decided to sponsor james gasped and her hand went over her mouth in disbelief. She was meeting her sponsored child in person right there. Now we discover that this young lady on stage had grown up as a missionary kid in Nairobi and had been back in the states now for three years and was really missing her home back in Nairobi and was wishing she could be connected there again and here she was on stage looking into a computer at a young child who had never seen a computer until today and they began to talk to each other in Swahili. When james said thank you to her ( asanti) this girl just wept and fell into my arms and ….well…God just did his thing there on the Bigstuf stage today.
And the life of a 17 year old girl in the United States and an 8 year old boy from a rural area outside of Nairobi Kenya will be changed forever.

I think we have posted our choir singing on here and a few other places but you don’t get to see them having fun sometimes. We give them permission when they are with me to have fun in the middle of the program….mainly because i want you to see who they really are. Just wonderful kids who love to sing and laugh and enjoy relationships. Here’s a few edited cuts just for you to smile.