One thing that made me smile right away was that Invesco field was literally right across from my hotel room. Above is a shot from the hotel room itself. What happened to the Broncos anyways?

Ok, so here’s what happened to our youth ministry:

Thursday November 13th since we are coming from Conrad, MT (small town north of Great Falls, MT) we chartered a bus that picked everyone up about 4:00pm from the church to begin the journey. The bus traveled throughout Thursday night into Friday morning. Since it’s quite a drive, Friday morning I was awakened to the sound of the bus driving on an icy interstate just north of Cheyenne, WY at about approximately 6:00am.

We exited at the flying J in Cheyenne, but the bus didn’t make it up the exit ramp and actually started sliding backwards. The bus driver got it to stop before we smashed the scared driver behind us. He had to put chains on the bus to get us up the ramp and we decided to sit tight for about an hour or so as we ate breakfast at the flying J and McDonald’s.

We arrived in Denver around 9:30am and had the bus driver drop us off downtown to walk the 16th street mall. If you have never been there, it’s a fun pedestrian street mall with all kinds of stores and food places. We decided to split off the girls and guys and the guys (but some how 1 gal came too) hiked it down to the river and we took this nice little shot of us with downtown in the background:

After we killed some time, we stopped into the ESPN sports store and had fun playing video games and taking in the sights and sounds – man that place was cool and fun for a guy.

Then it was finally time to go eat and we went to none other than Casa Bonitas. If you live Denver you probably never go there but it’s something fun to do when you are on the outside. They have live divers and entertainment in this huge restaurant and everyone says that the food is always “so so”. Here’s a shot of it:

Finally we checked into our hotel room and had some time to relax and shower and get ready for the conference. The conference was in the Pepsi center which was fun place. If you were at the conference and you were there waiting to get in on Friday evening – we are the ones that started the clap until everyone was clapping and screaming – fun stuff.

The night was awesome, the drama that they had was powerful, and we had a few of our students make some powerful commitments to the Lord one of which accepted Christ into his life for the first time!

The theme was Invincible based on Ephesians 6 (the armor of God). And Greg Stier and Zane Black walked us through it on Saturday.

Saturday morning the youth leaders met below in the pepsi center as Greg showed up to spoke with us. I have to say that I went to a D2S about 6 years ago and apparently the man doesn’t age! He’s a very powerful straight forward and motivating speaker. He motivated our youth leaders to purchase the Gospel Journey in Maui to which I will give a later review. The gospel journey is a reality series featuring a Buddhist, Christian, Jew, Mormon, and Muslim living in a Hawaiian beach house for a week and having spiritual conversations. I can’t wait to give you a personal review.

Anyways, we went out Saturday afternoon and it was gorgeous outside and we shared the gospel which we were trained to do with our section that we were assigned to in the town and we collected canned food for the Denver rescue mission. Our team only had 1 person that was actually interested in what we had to say but did not accept Christ right then and there. It was a powerful experience for the group and they had some great stories to share on our journey back home all night Saturday. The leaders were exhausted but pleased at how well the trip went.

We are prepared to share our trip with the congregation this Sunday so please pray that it comes across in a way that the congregation can really see just how powerful it was. My youth ministry is changed and students are more focused on sharing their faith now with their friends which is hard to do in a small town where students have already labeled you since kindygarten.

I highly recommend a Dare2Share trip near you at least every other year to keep sharing Christ a priority in your youth ministry.

Here’s a shot from inside the Pepsi center:

If you have any questions, please fill free to comment and/or share your experience with Dare2Share ministries. Thanks Greg and Zane for charging up our youth ministry!