Winter Blast 2007

I got back last night from our Winterblast Retreat. Our youth group went with Calvary Baptist church's youth group. In the past we'd gone to Spring Hill Camp, camp up North with amazing facilities. We decided to do it on our own this year because Spring Hill's food keeps getting worse, the camp more expensive, their pre-registration and cancellation policies tougher and for groups as far away as ours, we're never able to sign up for stuff by the time we get there.

We went to Grace Adventures camp in Mears, MI on the West side of the state, right outside the Silver Lake Sand Dunes. The retreat was called "Who Am I?" looking at Jesus in terms of our false images and the reality of who he is. I MC'd the retreat and before each speaker, Reagan would come up dressed as Jesus and act one of people's mis-conceptions of Jesus: King James Bible Jesus (quoting shakeperean King James scripture), Magician Jesus, Wimpy Relativist Peacenick Jesus and Dictator Jesus, as seen below. Reagan and I would talk as Reagan would do his hilarious spiel in character as we'd come to the conclusion that he was not the real Jesus.

Jason Shinn, Mark Butler and Phil Woodman taught the sessions and did an amazing job with the teachings. They did a great job using scriptures, story and video to hit the kids.

The camp had a great climbing wall also. 10 of us went climbing and it was fun watching the kids climb and cheer each other on as they scaled the wall.

We had no snow, but we made due by hitting the Silver Lake Sand Dunes close by. The place was deserted and the sand was frozen, but the kids had a blast. We climbed up, slid down and ran down the dunes, loving every second of it. The side benefit was that we wore the kids down hiking up and down the dunes.

The two pictured above are Matt and Seth, two of the more amusing kids. Saturday night around 12:30 in our cabin, the lights were out and these two started making farting noises, and being junior high guys, the rest laughed. You'd assume that after about five minutes they would stop. This kept going for about 30 minutes with the kids making the noises and others laughing. Twenty minutes in I just could stop laughing at the absurdity of the moment, but also realizing that this is exactly why I like working with junior high kids. I fell asleep to the noises while Shinn was forced to be the bad cop 30 minutes in.

We got home around 4:00 on Sunday and I was beat. It was an amazing event. I got to spend a ton of time with the kids and see them impacted by a message that will stick with them for a long time and have the potential to impact their eternity.

You can see more of the pictures here in the photo gallery.