Randi Walle

Tuesday’s Blitz community outreach activity consisted of teams who fanned throughout the LaCrosse, Wisconsin community, offering to do small labor tasks free and distributing a customized newspaper explaining the Christian Gospel and the week’s BNYC activities. Here a team prays at the corner of 28th and Birch Streets before beginning their door-to-door walk. 

A men’s quartet from the Osceloa, Indiana, Grace Brethren Church opened Tuesday’s morning session at Brethren Youth Conference with several foot-tapping Southern Gospel numbers. 

As part of Monday’s “Blitz” activities, students fanned out across the city doing service projects such as cleaning rooms, tearing down vines, shredding documents, and more. Here two students help at the local Red Cross office, where one of their tasks was to fly new American and Red Cross flags above the office. 

Monday’s noontime storm took roofs off buildings and downed trees in the downtown section of LaCrosse, Wisconsin. By God’s grace, however, the UWL campus where BNYC is occurring was largely untouched, and some of the students were able to pray and minister to those who were affected by the storm. 

Thank goodness it wasn’t yesterday! The Hoeschler Clock Tower courtyard, which Sunday had hundreds of people milling around, performing and eating as part of the International Cafe, was under about two feet of water after Monday’s noontime flash flood rain and hailstorm. 

A choir from the Chesapeake District, comprised of singers from seven different Grace Brethren churches on the eastern seaboard, performed in music and sign language prior to Monday morning’s main session. 

NAC Competitors are used as prelude numbers before each of the main sessions. On Monday morning these interpretive dance performers provided pre-service worship. 

Sunday night’s session with Dewey Bertolini as speaker was held in the U. Wisc. LaCrosse football stadium. It was a picture-perfect night, with a light breeze coming off the rock bluffs on the other side of the valley as 2,400 teenagers gathered in the stadium to sing and to hear a challenge from Bertolini. 

Dewey Bertolini, center, with microphone, answered questions under the lunch tent Sunday noon. Bertolini directs the National Institute which prepares young people for youth ministry, and he fielded questions as the “Bible Answer Man” from teens who listened as they ate a picnic lunch at the Brethren National Youth Conference.