About 90 children and parents trekked to northern Santa Rosa County last month to help revive a legacy. They gathered at Camp Paquette in the Blackwater River State Forest to participate in the first Children’s Missions Outdoor Fun Day, an event meant to provide healthy, fun activities while teaching children about Christian missionary work.

A popular kids’ song teaches, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world….”

Many young students first heard those words at Vacation Bible School, a longstanding summer tradition among Protestant denominations that is becoming more popular with Catholics in recent years.

Joel Beck, a youth pastor at West Florida Baptist Church in Milton, said mental health is one of the major challenges facing area residents, along with hunger and drugs. This Saturday and Sunday, March 16-17, the church will host a Wellness Weekend with Inspire Counseling Ministry. The topic? “Find Hope in the Scriptures: Overcoming Burnout, Depression, and Anxiety Through Clinically Informed, Spiritual-Applied Wisdom.”

Matt Dobson’s vision is becoming reality before his eyes. Dobson, interim pastor at Cora Baptist Church in Jay, competed in cross country and track at Florida State University and has built a career in health and wellness education.

Area Royal Ambassadors, Girls in Action and Children in Action groups are invited to participate in a Children’s Missions Outdoor Fun Day from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday, March 16, at Camp Paquette in the Blackwater River State Forest. To register and for more information, go to flbaptist.org/events.

Reggie Dabb’s unwed teenage mother was living in a chicken coop in Louisiana, considering whether to abort her unborn child, when she remembered a schoolteacher who told her students, “If you ever need anything, call me” and gave the students her home phone number. Desperate, she called Mrs. Dabbs.

Liberty Church has an alcohol problem; more accurately, it has a zoning problem. City of Milton ordinances currently prevent the Pensacola-based church from using the Imogene Theatre as a place of worship because of its alcoholic beverage and zoning rules.

The pastors at Living Truth Church in Pace talk a lot about discipleship; in January, it began producing a podcast as a new resource to help its “D-Groups” – discipleship groups – better understand the previous Sunday’s sermon.

Allison and Daniel Hartman have 11 children ranging in age from 3 to 25. Parenting for a quarter century, with another decade-and-a-half in front of them, Allison said the Hartmans have “kind of a different take on raising a family.”