Teens will attend youth gathering in New Orleans

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Tens of thousands of teenagers will converge on New Orleans for the Youth Gethering of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America...a triennial event for the high school-age members of the 4.7 million member church, and to work alongside those who build, teach, and live in the area still recovering nearly four years after Hurricane Katrina.

Attending the Youth Gathering from St. James Lutheran Church, rural Forreston, will be Derrick Nelson and Mindy Poppen along with their counselor, Kurt Edler.

The group will leave via chartered bus on Tuesday, July 21, and return home on Monday, July 27.

“Jesus, Justice and Jazz” is the gathering theme.

Worship, Bible study and Christian community will bolster the participants as they work in about 150 community service projects across the area and engage in the unique culture of the region.

“We have done some research and have determined, to the best of our ability, that the ELCA’s service effort in New Orleans is likely to be the largest servant ministry ever attempted in a three-day period of time,” said Heidi Hagstrom, director for the ELCA Youth Gathering. “We have 300 buses taking young people - about 12,000 per day - to 154 service sites, organized around six interest areas: housing, environment, wealth and poverty, health and wellness, the arts and culture, and literacy. We know that by choosing to hold the 2009 ELCA Youth Gathering among the people of New Orleans we will be richly blessed by their experiences of God’s embrace during hard times, and we hope to embody the church’s commitment to stand with them for as long as it takes.”

Hagstrom said, in advance of the Gathering, each participant picked one of the six interest areas.

The program in New Orleans was developed to help the youth put into practice what they have learned when they return to their homes.