One Christ, Won City

The pastors of various churches around Venice have come together to brainstorm how to win the city for Christ recently and out of that, One Christ, Won City was born. A few months ago, the churches got together for worship on the beach followed by each church performing their baptisms together. Over 40 people were baptized and the band was made up of singers and musicians from 4 churches. We then had a time of fellowship with watermelon. Many families from our church and school were there. It was neat to see those 2 worlds colliding. There were over 1,000 people there in all. It was amazing. It went so well that there was a second event planned. This was a prayer meeting. We went to the beach again to gather. The pastors each got up and shared what was on their hearts and led us in praying in groups for specific requests including the lost, our government, our churches, etc. It was amazing AGAIN! Here are some pictures from the second event.

I had to stand on the corner of the boardwalk railing to get up high enough to get all the people in the picture, and I am still not sure that was all of them! It was something to behold!

The kids had a safe place to play and enjoyed seeing school friends. This is Holden's friend Garrett who is being home schooled this year and he doesn't get to see him very often. They were thrilled with the unexpected play date!
I took the opportunity to brush up on the skills I learned when I took the photography class (that I never finished because I went back to Iowa this summer). Unfortunately, I didn't remember much but got a few fun pictures:

Boys will be boys. Here are Robby, Josh and Holden digging for puffer fish (they found several tiny ones), clams and sand fleas (GROSS):

Alayna didn't notice I was taking her picture for a minute:

...or maybe it was less than that, because then this started:

Heaven help us!