By Macy Reeves for the FCT

A time for fellowship, service projects and worship united Russellville youth group students Feb. 26-28.

Disciple Now is an event during which students are separated by grade and put in host homes for the weekend. At the host home, students spend time fellowshipping together, having small group times and just having fun. In small groups they discuss the theme, which this year was “guardrails,” meaning that each person has to set up metaphoric guardrails in life to prevent temptation turning into sin.

Friday night activities include a concert followed by a late night of movies, small group and even trips to Waffle House. But despite the lack of sleep Friday night, Saturday free time is packed with service projects, such as visiting senior adults at Country Cottage, collecting food items for the mission, cleaning at senior adult homes and helping senior adults with their yard work. Participants also held a fundraiser, selling chicken stew.

“It was a great weekend for us to be able to connect and grow as a youth group. Our small group leaders, youth pastors, the band and the speaker just poured so much into everyone who was a part this weekend to encourage us to draw closer to God and set up boundaries in our life in order to live a life that shows our love and devotion for Christ,” said Ashleigh Morgan, a senior from Russellville who attended the weekend event.

Friday and Saturday night, all the churches met at First Baptist – different churches play host each year – to worship together and listen to a guest speaker.

“God has a big plan for the students that were here this weekend,” said Ryan Garrett, the guest speaker at Dnow.

One of the main topics First Baptist youth pastor Patrick Horner discussed and showed videos about was A21, an organization dedicated to preventing slavery overseas, 80 percent being sex slaves. The average age for teens being taken out of the United States is 13, the youngest being four. A21 fights for justice for victims and offenders who participate. Nearly $700 was raised by donation from students who attend Dnow for A21 to help them in their cause.

“It went great. We had a number of churches participate, and we had more students participate this year than last year,” said Horner.