The Whitt Family: strength to stand!

nate and i have been helping a lot with our youth at church the past several months since we've been without a youth pastor. of course we usually help (even when we have a youth pastor) and nate always leads the worship... but we've stepped it up a notch lately. i've gotten to know so many of the teens better since the end of summer, and i'm grateful for the chance to learn with them, love on them, and live life with them! they are so fun, and they def keep me feeling young. well sometimes, they def make me feel old. haha!

we had the awesome chance to go to gatlinburg with the youth jan 14-16, for the strength to stand conference. it's put on by the scott dawson evangelistic association... basically there were 3 different speakers that we heard... then a huge concert including newsboys, rush of fools, kj52, the skit guys, and lecrae,. and each session we were privledged to be led in worship by the awesome kristian stanfill band! i heart them!!! they were absolutely incredible... i hear josh and shannon talk about kristian all the time, but never really knew much about him til this weekend. and what i found out is i LOVE his music, his heart, and his passion for christ. i can't wait til his new cd comes out... i've been wearing out his old one like nobody's business. seriously, i'm pretty sure the only 2 cd's i've listened to all month are kristian and newsboys!

we had an awesome group of people go with us... a total of 16 kids and 9 adults i believe. the kids were so well behaved... we had no issues at all, which was a huge blessing (and relief on our part) since we were kinda in charge! :) (sidenote: we got to see chris and lacy, our sweet friends and previous youth pastor, at the conference. it was sooo good to visit and catch up with them. little mama lacy was such a trooper.. going on this trip 35 weeks pregnant! not something i could have done!!) anyways... we had sessions on sat nite, sun morning, and then monday morning. b/w the sunday morning session and the concert that nite, we had some free time. we split up and headed into downtown gatlinburg. nate and i went with a group of the kids to the aquarium. it was so fun!! they had penguins!! they were so super cute! we will def have to go back soon and take our boys... the whole time i kept thinking of how much they would have loved it. (we went when i was pregnant with lucas but trace was just barely 2, so i know he doesn't remember much of it.) anyways, after we walked around town, we drove up into the mountains and saw some snow! i got out to take a pic with nate, but that was it! :-)

trying so hard to catch up on my blog... i could write so much about this trip. but for now, this is it. hope you enjoy our pics... again... can't tell you how much fun we had or how glad i am that we went.