Vidalicious

My name is Jen Brown and I attended the 1st internationa Vida in Qingdao, where the mountains meet the sea. I was super-duper privledged to sing on the worship team because "He is the music in me".

Okay, if you've been to Vida, you understand the above statement. Well, except for the end. I didn't get to sit at a table, so I made up my own thing.

For those of you who don't know, Vida is a retreat created for students to have an intense weekend-long connecting with Christ. We study His death, burial, resurrection, and several other key ingredients in our relatioship with Him. Communion is taken, repentance is sought, praise and worship is sung (sometimes yelled and sometimes whispered), servanthood is mirrored...it's an amazing experience.

To see high schoolers with so much potential, oozing with leadership and a desire to serve Christ, man, it is a powerful thing.

On our first night, after learning about Christ's death, the students are taken into a room where there is a wooden cross in the middle of the room surrounded by hammers and nails. After prayer and scripture reading, they have the opportunity to write down sins that they've asked forgiveness for, take that paper and nail it to the cross. When they are finished, they walk to the front of the room and have their hands washed by someone. Probably one of the most touching moments all weekend was having my hands washed by a young woman who was weeping as she washed. She "got it". She understood the symbol of what she was doing. It was so moving to me, to see a young woman truly understand what Christ has done for us. I don't think it happens very often. I don't think we often "get it".

There are many more things that happened but I don't want to spoil the surprise...

Needless to say, it was a wonderfully exhausting weekend. De Colores!!!