LG

Please help. My son has an LG Chocolate 3G touch. When he took it off of charging this morning and turned it on, it said it was searching for service. It did this for twenty minutes. I had him take out the battery for twenty minutes, then put it back in. It connected to the Verizon WIreless Network, but now we cannot make or receive any calls or texts. The phone goes through the dialing/sending message motions, but then says that the call/message cannot be completed/sent. Please help. My son has to go away on a camp trip and I do not want to send him without any contact method.