Join us for a memorable backpacking retreat to Manitou Island. The date is not set in stone yet as we are having problems working around peoples schedules. If you are interested in going on the retreat see Brian Thomas or Terry Potter. We will be leaving on a Friday and returning on a Monday so plan ahead to take off work. Some of the Items you may want to pack include.

• Sleeping Bag


• Rope


• Water Filter (to filter lake water) or Water Bladder's to hold water in. (Only 2 fillups on the Island)


• Tent


• Food for 4 days ( Best to pack light things like pasta's, beef jerky, granola bars, etc.)


• Insect Repellant


• Toothbrush and Toothpaste


• Two pair of shoes (one always gets wet)


• Clothes for warm and cold weather


• Swimsuit


• Fishing Pole if you want to fish (Must have valid fishing license)


• First aid kit (just in case, (small one))


• Compass


• portable cooking device (pocket rocket )


• Mess Kit (includes such things as small pots for cooking.)


• Possibly swiss army knife (they come in handy)

Its a blast.  The island is beautiful.
If you are interested email Brian Thomas at brianpthomas@gmail.com or Terry Potter at terry_potter@msn.com . We are currently determining how many want to go so let us know ahead of time so we can plan.

We're still tallying numbers from Friday night's High School lock-in, but it looks like we had around 125 high school teens.  Combined with our middle school lock-in, we had over 175 teens at this year's lock-ins (compared with last year's lock-in that had an attendance of 150).  What an awesome God we serve!  The new element for this year's lock-in was the concert with The Undivided.  When I went through the details with them before the night began, we had planned to have some type of "invitation" time at the end of the concert.  We weren't exactly sure what to expect and was amazed to see so many teens acting on the message they presented.  The Undivided did an awesome job clearly presenting the decision before each and every one of us: To follow Christ.  Needless to say, I was shocked at the response, as we were left with how to follow up with the great number of teens wanting to make a decision.  I praise God for our leaders (adults and teens) that stepped up to the plate and worked one-on-one with many teens that made a decision for Christ, with very little warning or preparation.  I guess that brings a whole new meaning to being ready "in and out of season."  Please continue to lift up the teens that made a decision to follow Christ as well as a our teen and adult leaders and all the teens in our youth group.

Pastor Ryan Throop

Thank you all for praying for our Mudfest this afternoon.  We had 16 teens for the event, in addition to many 2nd - 6th Grades that were part of Junior Church MudFest.  The Ida and Summerfield fire departments hooked us up with about 20,000 gallons of H2O that mixed nicely with our 40X30 feet of dirt.  We had a number of adults and parents stay to help and some even got a little muddy.  God held off the rain and lightning until just at the very end of the event, so it was great to rinse off the mud out of our face.  After we got cleaned up, we had a time of sharing from God's Word at the end.  The mud was
an illustration of how sin is in our lives.  Talk about an object lesson!

We saw several new faces for our youth.  Pray that this event would be the avenue to get them locked into our youth group.  Each new person was brought by another one of our teens, so pray that God
would use Cornerstone youth in the lives of their friends to draw them to Himself.

PRAISE GOD!!!!!

Pastor Ryan