Jesus, Justice, Jazz – ELCA National Youth Gathering 2009

I am leaving on Tuesday morning, somewhere in the 4′oclock hour for New Orleans as a chaperone for the high school youth group of Our Saviour’s! I’m pretty excited about it! We’re going to be driving down from Naperville, IL in two coach buses. This trip is the ELCA National Youth Gathering which takes place in a different city every three years. This will be my third time participating in some way in a National Youth Gathering. In 2003 I went to NYG in Altanta, GA as a youth participant. In 2006 I went to NYG San Antonio, TX as a volunteer for the Gathering and this year I’m going as a chaperone for our group! The Gathering is pretty much a huge youth event. Somewhere around 36,000 high school youth and adults will be participating this year! We’ll be sleeping in hotels throughout the city and will have activities in a convention center as well as our large group events in the Superdome!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I will be blogging about this trip throughout the week as well as posting pictures and videos of our fun times down there in New Orleans. The updates throughout the next week will be geared for the parents of our youth back home in Naperville but I will also try and make them relevant for my regular readers. Hopefully I’ll be able to give you all a flavor of the awesomeness that is the National Youth Gathering. I know that a lot of you parents are still a little bit unsure about what all we’re going to be doing and hopefully I can help answer some of your questions because let’s be honest… you’re children probably aren’t going to call home.

For those of you that are on twitter you can follow updates about the Gathering by following the official Jesus Justice Jazz twitter account or by searching #jjj09.