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On Aug. 22, 2021, a Facebook user posted a photograph that purportedly showed a large Christian gathering in an arena in 2021. The text, which included the hashtag #NAYC21, claimed that it wasn't widely covered by the news media. It mentioned that the North American Youth Congress (NAYC) event purportedly only made it into local reports in the St. Louis, Missouri, area, where the picture was captured. According to the NAYC Facebook page, it is a semi-annual youth conference sponsored by the United Pentecostal Church International. Six hours after the post was made, the user added #repost to the end of the text. The truth of the matter is that it was copied and pasted from the WKRN Jerry Barlar Facebook page, where it was originally posted on Aug. 5, 2019. The picture did indeed show a NAYC gathering in St. Louis, Missouri. However, it was captured in 2019, not 2021. And in 2021, the in-person portion of the gathering was canceled due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. While the repost may have been somewhat misleading, the sentiments expressed in the original text appeared to be true. We only found reporting from Fox News, CBN, Texarkana Gazette, St. Louis-based TV station Fox 2, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. We were unable to locate any other news media coverage of NAYC in 2019 in any other location around the world. The viral post claimed that 37,000 attendees came to the event and filled up thousands of buckets with relief supplies. This was also true, as Fox 2 reported: In sum, it's true that the NAYC was pictured in viral Facebook posts. However, the event did not have an in-person gathering in 2021. The original text of the posts was from 2019. The full text of the viral posts is provided below:
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