So the last couple of weeks the hubs and I have been busy planning for a very exciting event at our church. Last year were also asked to help put together this event. Here is my post from last year.
Our church, The Chapel, has several baptisms throughout the year. Every summer they like to make a big celebration around one in particular to encourage inviting others to experience a baptism and to show support to our church family. The last two years the hubs and I have had the wonderful privilege of being asked to help plan this event. Last year, we had the blessing of watching 30 people make the decision to let Jesus Christ be the ruler of their lives. When asked again this year to help coordinate we were hoping to continue our activity we created last year and make it an annual tradition. Unfortunately, another event at our church decided to use our boat race idea and it took place two weeks before our event. So the hubs and I went back to the drawing board to come up with something new and fun for this year. We had to laugh when we saw the brochure for the event this year and across the top it said: From the creators of Floatentag (the name of our boat race activity) comes the Water-Athalon! : ) We felt like we had a lot to live up to. We kept our theme of Take the Plunge and went with a water themed event. The hubs is oober creative and I like to organize and plan, so together we can pull together an ok event. : ) The hubs came up with the idea of a Water-Athalon and came up with 3 fun water activities. The three activities were: A Bog Dive- this was a search in the church's lovely "pond" for brightly painted pop liters and milk gallons. The one with the most found won a $10 itunes card and the one that found the special gold bottle got two free movie tickets. Second event was water archery- which just consisted of throwing water balloons at a target, simple for anyone to do. Person with the most accurate shot got a itunes card and the person with a good try but worst result also got an itunes card. The third event was a belly flop/ splash contest- the church acquired a water trampoline from a local rental company at no cost for the contestants to leap from. We volunteered 3 well known people in our church as our celebrity judges and asked them to grade each jumper. We gave prizes for best belly flop, biggest splash, and looked like it hurt the most!
It was a smaller crowd this year since we only had a few weeks notice to begin advertising for the event and making announcements about it and at first we were very nervous people weren't going to participate. But soon enough people started coming out of the woodwork and volunteering. It was really great when a bunch of the high schoolers got involved and got people pumped up about it!
Before the Water-Athalon, there were fun water activities for the kids and bouncies. And everyone was asked to bring out their own food and tailgate a bit before everything started up. It is such a nice feeling of community and great way to get to know our church family. Following the Water-Athalon were the actual baptisms. I absolutely LOVE this part of the event. Each baptizee either reads, or has read, their testimony and how they came to make the decision to accept Christ. They are humbling, inspiring, and moving. There was a family- mom, dad, and daughter- that got baptized. After losing their son/brother they knew Jesus was the only way they could carry on and now as mom struggles with brain cancer they know Jesus will be by their side. There was a 12 year old girl who said she was not a nice person and was even mean to her friends and wanted to be more like Jesus. A man that struggled with drug and alcohol addiction that credited Jesus for helping him clean up his life. Oh and so many more. Altogether we had 17 people get baptised and afterwards two more came forward because they felt the Lord telling them to take this step. Just amazing. Sorry to be so wordy and picture overload but I wanted to share this amazing event with all of you!
Here is the hubs setting up for the Bog Dive, placing the painted liters/gallons all over and under the water:
The girls were SUCH GREAT troopers. They were out from 12:30-7 with no naps and not a whole lot of attention from the hubs and me, and over all were so well behaved!
Pausing for a snack.
Ah, such a precious girl! She is quite obsessed with her new Phineas and Ferb dolls.
Here are the contestants jumping in for the bog dive!
The girls loved cheering them all on.
What a great, and handsome, MC we had for the event. ; )
I think everyone really enjoyed the festivities!
Time for water archery!
Here are our celebrity judges getting ready for the belly flop/splash contest!
(associate campus pastor, wife of our worship leader, and the campus pastor)
Looks pretty good....
Apparently the judges weren't impressed. : )
Hard to see this one but if you look close you can see his feet straight out, a definite straight belly flop!
Check out this form!
And our last contestant, winner of "Look like it hurt most" award!
And then we had the special time of hearing 17 people (and then 2 more) and their amazing stories of how they came to know the Lord!
I hope the girls will enjoy this event with us for years to come!
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