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This is my first shot at a behind the scenes video and definitely leaves plenty of room for improvement. But it's kind of fun nonetheless.

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This is my sweet, little niece, Hannah! This is her debut on my blog. Her shirt says, "This is What Sweet Looks Like" and that's the truth..she is precious as can be. She welcomed 2009 with a special New Year's Day performance.

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It's rare that we have an open Sunday night at the Gibbons' home. This past week our girls capitalized off of the moment to bring us a little Christmas cheer. For more great family videos click on the "Gibbons Family" link on the right.

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Our goal was to raise $50,000 to buy a vehicle for Convoy of Hope, an organization that's doing some incredible work in Ghana, Africa. I asked Darin Poe, our District Youth Director to share any additional needs he was aware of so, in case we exceeded our goal, we could surprise a few extra missionaries with a special Christmas blessing. This video captures that thrilling moment!

It was unbelievable to see all the ways the students and leaders of Realife gave above and beyond their ability. With God's help, we raised a grand total of $75,389!

I'd ask that you'd pray with me as we collect the remarkable stories of all that God did during this missions drive. Right now, we're writing a book for students on the subject of giving and we're praying that God will use it to challenge teens across the nation to give $1,000,000 to missions next year. That's right, one million dollars. We really need God's help on that. Can't wait to see how God does it!!!

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It always amazes me that the celebration of the birth of Christ could be reduced to people on earth swapping gifts with one another. I don't think God minds us exchanging gifts, it's just strikes me funny that we can become so easily distracted by the materialism.

Picture celebrating your own birthday. Friends and family plan and prepare for the big night. People talk about it and anticipate the fun night. Everyone shows up...gifts in hand. And all of the sudden they starting swapping gifts with one another and you're standing there silently watching the whole thing. Call me crazy...just seems weird.

Tonight, we are throwing Jesus' a birthday party. What do you give Him. Obviously your life is a good place to start. So we will take some time just to reaffirm our love for Him and commitment to Him. We will also reflect on His gift of life to us and take time to say thanks. For the grand finale we will receive our final offering for the missions drive. We figured He would probably love it if we did everything possible to tell more people about the gift He's already provided for us. It should be fun.

So, to help put us in the mood for the big event here's Kelly Grace singing happy birthday, Jesus!

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Tonight I had a chance to test out my new video camera with 500 of my closest high school friends.

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Today the James River Staff got together for a "Cowboy Christmas" party. We had a blast! I will try to post a few of the highlights over the next several days...you will enjoy them. We had competitions in different categories like Karaoke, Bull Riding (Seriously...well kind of), best dessert, and more.

It was a great time. I'm really blessed to be a part of such an amazing team. These friends really love God, and work extremely hard to share His love with this world. Days like today are nice to just be together and have some fun. As you'll see in the videos, we did just that!

This first video is Chris Parsons winning the Bull Riding Contest. It's a lot harder than it looks!

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This video captures the award winning performance of Debbie Lindell, the 2008 Karaoke Champion.

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This past Friday night we had a blast recognizing Realife's volunteer leaders. One of the highlights was a human video from Realife's two-headed man, Mary.

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Tonight we were privileged to have David Grant, missionary to India, join us at Realife. Check out this video and see all that God is doing in India!