“We exist everyday to demonstrate God’s love to a broken world” — it’s written big and bold on one of the banners each week as you come into GraceStudents. Student Pastor Norm Tumlinson and Assistant Director Brent Upham lead this ministry with a focus toward a deeper spiritual life in Christ that’s expressed in serving others.

It makes sense, then, that our students’ Camp BigStuf experience would be no different. For starters, the camp, which was themed “Konnekt,” kicked off by helping students reach out to a world beyond themselves.

“Each student and leader got a car with a number to correspond with a Kenyan student during camp,” says Norm. The campers wrote letters on boards and stepped into a photo booth to take a shot of themselves and their message to send around the globe.

Our own team planned to focus on service, too: on a day where our group could have spent free time doing anything, student leaders and volunteers helped our students show the love of Christ to a hospice patient.

Student small group leader Shalimar Basner talked about the day:

“(Student volunteers) Rodney & Ginger Wright made a ‘konnektion’ with Covenant Hospice of Panama City prior to our arrival. The students were not told what we were doing, just asked to put on clothes they could get dirty in.

“We picked up trash on some neighborhood streets and then mowed, raked, and cleaned up the yard of a sweet lady named Mrs. Nutter, whose husband Donald had a stroke in 2007. She was extremely grateful to the students and wrote us a letter while we were working… Norm just read it out loud to us on the bus. It was an amazing day. We are so blessed to serve God’s people! And it’s not over yet!”

The letter from Mrs. Nutter ended with a sentence that summed up the day: “God smiled on us today with all you beautiful friends from Orlando.” For more pictures of the day, head over to the BigStuf album on Facebook.

Welcome home today, and way to serve, GraceStudents!