Our Remedy girls got together on Valentine’s Day for some food, fun and fellowship.

Whether you were a Pats fan or pulling for Eli and the Giants, there was great fellowship, chili and some dodgeball at our Super Bowl 2012 party.

I hope you are excited about summer being here! This summer is going to be a blast and SWERVE Miami is going to be awesome. I am writing you go over all the camp details and answer any possible questions or concerns you might have. Because so many of you travel for July 4th weekend, our mandatory camp meeting will be held Wednesday, June 22^nd.

Full camp payment is due July 3^rd. I realize this is a holiday weekend so if you are going to be absent, please make arrangements to make the full payment before the deadline. If you need to know what your remaining balance is email Kim at Kim.Bedwell@fbclakeland.org.

SWERVE Miami will be from Sunday, July 10^th through Friday July 15^th. We will have a mandatory meeting for parents and students on Wednesday, June 22^nd at 6:00pm. This meeting will be a quick review to make sure that everything is crystal clear about our expectations for student behavior and other important details. If you have any questions about camp, please contact me when you get a chance.

Sunday July 10^th we will meet in the warehouse and have lunch at 12:30pm. We will provide pizza for campers. After we review the camp details one last time we will load the 57-passenger bus around 2pm and depart for camp.

A typical day of camp will be: the students eating breakfast at our hotel, volunteering at a structured Dade County Park named Gould Park, doing something fun in the afternoon as a group, cleaning up at the hotel, attending a nightly worship service, and returning to the hotel to sleep. Thursday will be the exception to this routine. On that day we will hold a block party at Gould Park for the kids in the county program we have been volunteering at all week. At 4pm all the Gould Park kids will be brought into the gym and we will present the full Gospel to them. When we finish with the kids at the Gould Park, we will clean up at the hotel and head to Bayside Marketplace for the night. Bayside Marketplace is a safe Miami hangout and mall much like our Lakeside Village.

We will leave at checkout time on Friday July 15^th from the hotel to head home. We will stop for lunch on the way home and should arrive back at church around 4pm Friday afternoon. We will post on Facebook the exact time we leave and expected time of arrival. Students will also be allowed to call parents to give them time updates on the way back.

A quick note about this trip, I realize that we all have images of Miami and certain preconceptions of Miami life; however, on this trip, we will NOT even be close to a beach (it’s over an hour away) and we will NOT be in downtown Miami. We are actually just outside of Miami much like Kissimmee is outside of Orlando.

The places we will be staying and working are more suburbs than anything. Please know that our top priority is to keep your student safe. We appreciate you trusting your student to our care and we do not take it lightly. At the moment we have 1 chaperone for every 4 students on the trip.

We will be staying at Holiday Inn Express Hotel and Suites 11520 SW 88^th Street Miami, Fl 33176. I have been assured by Pastor John Churchill, Lead Pastor of Bay Community Church, that this is an extremely safe area.

The church we are partnering with during SWERVE Miami is Bay Community Church 10549 SW 184th Terr. Miami, FL 33157. John Churchill is Pastor.

What to bring: Good attitude, modest clothing, Bible, comfortable shoes, MODEST one-piece swimsuit (if you choose to swim), air mattress/sleeping bag, pillow, extra spending money, sunscreen, and snacks.

What NOT to bring: immodest clothing, clothes with inappropriate messages, drugs, alcohol, fireworks, pornography, knives, weapons, anything else that might disrupt the purpose of camp.

Cell Phone Policy: Cell phones are allowed for the trip.  You may keep them on your person in case of emergency, but you may only use them in your hotel room (texting, music, phone calls, etc.).  If at any point your chaperone sees you on your cell phone outside of the hotel room (not in an emergency), the cell phone will be taken away for the remainder of the trip.

*Your child will need to bring money to cover 3 meals: Sunday night at a mall food court, Thursday night at Bayside Marketplace, and Friday lunch on the way back at a mall food court ($30 should be plenty to cover meals). Your child will probably want to bring extra cash for shopping at Bayside Marketplace, a possible movie at Bayside Marketplace, or an opportunity to hold a 3’ alligator while at the airboat ride ($3).

One last thing that we must address is the issue of discipline. Our desire is to have a great camp that students will enjoy and where God will move. In order to make this a possibility and to keep your child safe, we must ensure that all students are respectful and obedient to any and all chaperones. If your child leaves the group without permission, blatantly disobeys chaperones in a major way, or creates big problems, we will be forced to send your child home at your expense; so please make sure your child understands our behavior expectations in order to avoid having to address this issue.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me as soon as possible. We will distribute a fridge friendly information sheet at the meeting before we depart. We look forward to SWERVE Miami and what God is going to do in and through your students. We encourage you to start praying even now for your child and this trip.

God Bless,

Josh

Warehouse opens at 5pm

6:00-6:35pm Middle School Interactive Icebreakers

6:35-7:35pm Combined Student Worship Service

7:35-8pm Hub Small Groups

Make sure to be checking out the Thanatos Event Page by clicking on the image below.