I just wanted to say that I know your picture has helped some teens get into the Spirit and feel more enthusiastic about "Church" and "God" and "Jesus" and all that "stuff".

My name is Ryan and I am a twenty-year-old down from college for the summer, and I recently went back to my old youth group to help out as a young adult with their annual Antioch retreat, which is created and directed "for teens, by teens". Well, I was asked to give some of the team leaders a little pep talk a couple weeks before the actual weekend was to happen, and in my talk I reminded them of something that I thought was very important: that the Church and all this "God stuff" is not just a bunch of rules designed to make us all feel confined and guilty all the time. It's designed to help us! It's about Love! It's about joy to be with Christ and his joy in being with us. It's about happiness! Well I used my little print of a Jesus Laughing picture to illustrate this point. At least a couple of the teens, I remember, told me "wow, I had never noticed that picture before," or "I had seen it but never thought of it that way." (It had been sitting on a table off to the side, just a little print...My brother had acquired it somehow years ago and left it to me and later I gave it to the youth group.)

I just want to tell you how precious I think your picture is. It's really a diamond in the rough, one of scant few pictures I can think of that can do what it does for people. It reminds us of Joy.

Ryan

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