This past Friday I got to participate in my first ever Relay for Life. It's basically an over night walk and sleepover, sponsored by the American Cancer Society. While I don't talk about it much on here, I'm a leader for my church's high school youth group, Rev. (Short for Revolution.) I was thrilled to hear that some of our students were participating and when a fellow leader who was helping to organize the event asked me to help photograph it I was ecstatic! And truthfully, it exceeded all of my expectations!
Tradition is that the survivors take the first lap around the track.
Some of our youth group students.
Throughout the evening there are different events that take place to help raise money, my favorite was definitely the local firefighters vs. police force tug of war. The police definitely took it!
Jose, a fellow youth group leader, and one of the head organizers did an amazing job throughout the night! Love that cape! He's definitely a super hero!
Some of our students decided to try for an entire lap of leap frog...
... unfortunately they didn't make it too far.
As one of the main fundraisers for Relay for Life, participants sell luminary bags, and people write the names in honor of those who are fighting or who have lost their battle to cancer. These bags line the track and as the sun sets they place lights inside, and for about an hour, they turn off all the over head lights in the stadium and someone over a microphone says each and every name written on the bags. It's such a powerful time.
And as the night went on our students just had a blast hanging out and playing games.
And yes... goofing off. (the legs actually belong to a fellow youth group leader if you can believe it or not!)
Stretching for games!
Our students can be... well determined to say the least when it comes to games at 1am in the morning.
And gradually people started to attempt to go to sleep.
I unfortunately had to leave around 1:30am and didn't stay for the rest of the event, but our Rev. Team won the award for most people who stayed up all night! So proud of our students for participating in such a great event for an even greater cause!
Amazing photos Jenna. Thanks so much for sharing our celebration!
Posted by: jose | June 13, 2011 at 10:19 AM