Rencontre de Jeunesse

The Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of the 22nd of April was the "Rencontre de Jeunesse" or "RJ" youth conference for christian teens (mostly evangelical) from all over French-speaking Switzerland. There were even church groups that came from France and Italy! A lot of people brought sleeping bags and stayed the whole weekend. The event took place at the "Espace Gruyere" which is a giant building in Bulle (named after the region, not the cheese) which normally functions as an ice rink, but was transformed into a concert hall by the army of RJ volunteers just for this weekend!

 A large part of the building was reserved for stands selling food, christian brand clothing, christian music, christian books, game experiences, and stands working to bring awareness to their various organizations. There was a blow up bouncy castle, a mural painting in progress, numerous photo-shoot setups, a bandstand with live music, courses to try out a new electric, 2-wheeled skateboard/scooter, carton-tower building contests, chin-up contests, and even a nurf battle terrain! I loved looking around at all the people that were there. There were everything from good christian, country conservative types to some shockingly eccentric or even goth kids that all found their place and felt welcome at this conference. I ran into many people I knew from Friday night youth group at Oron, and even someone from choir!

I had a great time running around the conference with Tabea and our friends from youth group! We explored all the stands, ate french fries late every night after the last worship concert had finished, got into the crowd early to run through the aisles and reserve seats right up front, danced and sang to the worship songs we knew, and spent the whole weekend filled with all the positive and spectacular energy of christian youth revival!

There were messages throughout the entire conference addressing everything from initiating evangelical healing to sexuality. We heard testimonies from giant evangelists from all over the world. The most impressive by far was an eccentric American named Tod White who shared his incredible transformation from drug dealer to fearless messenger of God. I benefited from hearing all his messages twice: in English and then French. There was a speaker from Quebec who's accent was not only an adventure to try and understand, but frighteningly catchy.



There was a lot of silliness at the conference! We were treated to a faked interview with a pair of guest llamas, a jingle that instructed us in the usage of the RJ hashtag, dances lead by our hosts dressed as tetris pieces, and impressive beat-boxing skills by our guest speakers. I guess that is just the way you catch the attention of three thousand teenagers in a concert hall!

The concerts were always something powerful to witness! Their setup was spectacular, especially considering that it had all been brought there and constructed on top of an ice rink! There were a million gorgeous lighting affects that came from I don't even know what, suspended from I don't even know where, and distributed all throughout the conference. There were semi-transparent, drop-down screens where they projected testimonies and videos to absolutely fill the hall with the message of the conference. I became frequently distracted by a mesmerizing video

camera that swung out across the room on a long, operator-controlled arm, and sent its footage to four, giant screens up front. Screen time was shared between this fantastical piece of equipment and an army of black-clothed reporter camera carriers that dodged in and out of the musicians onstage and the audience below like paparazzi agents.

The music was awesome! We were even honored to have our own youth group worship team on stage for most of the concerts, selected out of all of the other participant churches!

The beautiful photos above were taken by the photographers of the conference, but below is my small, video contribution which will prove to you all that I successfully protected by hearing throughout all the concerts with a pair of styling earplugs! PEACE!