The blog

Well, I promised you a blog about the Fall Retreat, so here it is. I promised you pictures, oh man have I got pictures. My favorite is of one of my friends, Cy, peeking up over the bus seat right before shoving a plastic cowboy gun against my head. I surrendered my camera soon after. But not to him. So ha. This is another favorite of mine:

 I was taking a picture of Chip and Cy popped in…

So, to start my little story here, we had a three hour bus drive, right through my hometown, to
Dayton, IA. I brought a bag of snacks which I gave to Cy and Ryan for a while and, unfortunately, by the time they were done… well… the food was gone. I kinda forgot that the end is a guy’s only stopping point. I guess to be fair, they did leave me three squished packs of swiss cake rolls.

But yeah, also on the trip, I got re-acquainted with a friend I haven’t talked to in, like, forever. So it was a pretty sweet drive down even though it did take a while.

When we got to the camp all our luggage was already unpacked so we just had to hunt down our specific pieces. Then the girls headed upstairs to our dorm and the guys trekked across the forever it took to get to their cabin (they ended up getting the better deal though in the end). Well, my small group, the Pink Pirates, instantly set up camp. We picked out our bunks (some had to sleep on mattresses on the floor), put down our stuff and got to decorating.

Sara (not me, another one) pulled out this huge poster board that proclaimed ‘Pink Pirates’ and hung it on our door. Black and pink streamers were hung from the doorframe. We were on.

That night we had our first session. We, the girls, now had to head across to the guys’ cabin. You see, you go upstairs for the dorms. Downstairs are activities.

The girls got the gym, pool, several foosball tables, a huge TV and chess board and a wide open space to just hang. The guys got the session room, the cafeteria, and the fire. It doesn’t seem like much in comparison, but they got the better end of the deal.

So back to our first session. We got in there, took our seats and our leader asked for volunteers from each small group. Brittnie went up from my group. I saw horror slowly dawn on her face as they unveiled what they were doing.

Two blenders sat on the table. Anytime my youth group leaders get their hands on a blender, it’s bad news for whoever signed up for the competition. Since our theme was outlaws, Nate, one leader, put together a typical meal you’d eat ‘out on the range’. Coffee, flapjacks, beans, salsa, milk, mashed potatoes, oh, he got it all.

Then Nate shoved it all in the blender and made a delicious smoothie. It was so chunky he had to lift it up and shake it to get it to blend. The point was, whoever could down it without puking it up afterwards got 250 points for their team. Brittnie swallowed, plugged her nose, and chugged.

Three girls managed it. So did two guys. We got 250 points out of it.

Then Tim got up to lead worship. After that, we were introduced to our speaker for the weekend, Paul. He got up, said hi, kinda told us a bit about himself, then introduced the topic for the night. Hell.

Everyone did a double-take. I mean, what is wrong with this guy? Everyone knows you don’t start off an amazing, awesome retreat weekend talking about the Christian boogeyman called ‘Hell’. It’s just not done.

He told us about his friend, Rhett, in college. Rhett looked tough, sounded tough, just was a tough guy really. And Paul’s roommate was a Christian who tried to minister to Rhett. One time, Rhett just laughed and said, “You know what, I’m going to hell, my friends are going to hell, and we’re gonna have one hell of a party.”

This wasn’t a story about how some guy who was ‘so lost’ eventually did a 180 and became an amazing, God-fearing man. It was a story about our perceptions of hell. Until then, my perception of hell had been tied to a feeling and a thought. There have only been two times in my life when I have felt the utter separation that the Christian ‘Hell’ is said to boast. Both times I swore I would never have dealing in such dark things again because it was so torturous.

Now Paul painted a picture for us. Gehenna. Gehenna fire. This is what Jesus used to describe the hell he said was created for Satan and his angels.

Gehenna was a garbage dump in a valley outside
Jerusalem. All the waste from the city was taken out to this mound to be thrown out. Added to the putrid scent of human waste, rotting food, and garbage, was human bodies. Executed criminals were often thrown in this place, Gehenna.

Added to that is hell’s famous fire. Burning sulfur, a lake of it. This lake somehow manages to burn as darkness. Then Paul told us, put that all together and turn out the lights.

There won’t be friends, all there will be is the shrieks of torture. It’s not something to grow used to either. Any good feelings we have are tied to God, and there is no longer any God there. After saying this, Paul told us something I have heard every other Christian in my life deny.

He said, yes, hell is meant to scare us. Unlike the boogyman though, hell isn’t something that will chase us down. We choose hell. It’s one of two options.

As Paul was telling us about this, speaking of how few people really will choose heaven, telling us about the very real horror of this place that we can never truly comprehend, his voice wavered. His words cracked for a moment as he held back tears. And he was reflecting the feelings of almost everyone there that night; failure, helplessness, and utter brokenness because of how little we can actually do. He ended the session on that note and for once a room full of high school students was silent as they left with their friends.

We all knew, then, that hell was more than a scare tactic. We were all quiet because we had been seeing friends in our minds eye during this talk. And we didn’t know if we could even escape that fate.  Never have I seen that group of high school students so somber, so thoughtful.

Our small groups met afterward to talk about it. Then we all went to bed. And that was our first day.

I almost wish that first talk had been death, doom, fire, and brimstone, just so I could laugh it off. Some strange fanatic shouting himself hoarse about how we must repent because we’re all going into the pit of sulfur is fairly easy to ignore. But this scene that Paul quietly painted for us, very simple and straightforward, was unnerving. He was so sincere.

Some would tell him he was cruel for damping the spirits of so many high school students on their first night when they were all so excited and having fun. He told us a story about when his mom got breast cancer. If the doctor hadn’t have told her, he would have been downright evil, because then she couldn’t fight back. If he had just been like, “it’s alright, you just have a cold, go home, lie down,” because the news would break her heart, the best he would be is a coward.

“Is this whole thing just trying to unnerve you? Well, Jesus is unnerving.” He said. Everything he said about hell came from Jesus. Jesus is unnerving. Looking back at the quotes I wrote down, the ones that struck me the most, I noticed the words, ‘Lord, have mercy on us’.  He prayed that afterward. Paul was shaken up by his own sermon.

We went to bed that night either quiet or trying to fill in the silence with noise to spare ourselves the worry that had fallen over us.

The next morning, after breakfast, we talked about heaven.

Alright, maybe you’re wondering just what my excuse is this time for missing my deadline *shudder*. In a word, pictures. I have been searching all week for our stupid digital camera so I wouldn’t have to borrow one of the school’s. So far, nada, but I think my dad has it. If he does then voila, I promise you pictures to light up a page otherwise made up of words alone.

Okay, now not to make you think or anything (I’m sure you have to do enough of that in class, ugh =P ), but words are very weird. I mean, think of it; something inside our brain takes these nonsensical sounds that we make, attaches them to a certain object, and then you have language. And further, our brain recognizes all of these sounds. In some languages (like Japanese), the sounds are so pivotal that even just a slight stress change (where the stress falls on a word) changes the whole meaning. Not only that, but then we attach shapes to the sounds of these words and stick them together to form writing. Isn’t that insane? Ugh, my brain is going to die. I really should stop thinking…

At any rate, that’s my amazing thing for today’s blog.

Now, I have been toying with an interesting idea. I’m not sure if I’m going to do it or not, but it would be very good for me I think, to have a deadline and something to hold me accountable for this stuff. You see, I’m writing a book, several books to tell you the truth, but I think I finally settled on one to finish. But I have an issue just buckling down and doing it, ya know?  So I was think that every week to two weeks (depending on my schedule) I post a chapter with my blog. Well, it would actually be a link to it, not the story on the blog.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. It should be something along the lines of, ‘What’s the story about?’ Well that’s an extremely good question. It’s pretty much just following the life of this assassin, from his teenage years to his death. Not only him, but we also follow some of the people he interacts with, including his syndicate. It’s kinda neat in some ways, sometimes sad. To warn you fairly, there are scenes of rather graphic torture, not to mention the fact that it’s about assassins so I’d rate it ‘R’ for violence if it was a movie. Fortunately, it’s not a movie, so I don’t have to rate it, but I’m just trying to give you some sort of scale to work off of. Um, let me think. I don’t really know how else to explain it except as the life of an assassin in the city, but that sounds pretty boring. Hmm… well, some of the things that happen to the assassin, Nathan, are, of course, encounters with gangs, rival syndicates and wars between them, how he meets and hires each of the guys in his syndicate, betrayals, love (had to throw a bit of that in there), we get to see firsthand what happens before their execution when an assassin is captured… I dunno. It’s really just a good story. 

But, at any rate, I’ve been toying around with that idea. If I decide to do it, my first post will be in two weeks. I think. But don’t quote me on that.

Now, having bored you for so long, I think I owe you my blooper of the week.

B100p3r 0f 7he w33k:

Okay, since we just ‘officially’ got the blog up and running (It took us forever to catch it… ha ha! Lame joke!), I still haven’t gotten any blooper suggestions. So here’s what happens when you mix me with a spiced chai mix. Well, I have this funny habit of enjoying the small of spices. And this Chai mix has a sort of creamy smell to it too. So, of course, I love the smell.

Now, I also have this funny habit of, when I like something, insisting that everyone else try it too. So I was going around to my family going, “Come on guys, you have to smell this, it’s awesome! Come on, if you won’t drink it at least smell it! Come on, it’s just chai!” And on and on. Well, they still weren’t buying, so I decided to demonstrate. I stuck my nose in the bag and inhaled. I love the smell. A lot of it is cloves and cloves are awesome ^^ So, to emphasize my point now, I inhaled again. My dad thought this was funny, but I was less than amused when he came up when I was doing this and popped the bottom of the bag. And I’m not talking broke it to spill my chai on the floor. No, he hit it and you can imagine how happy I was to suddenly have spiced chai rushing up my nostrils. Now, as good as it smells, as good as it tastes, chai burns… it was rather bad.

Everyone was extremely sympathetic while they were all laughing at me. I couldn’t really do anything at that point but rush over to the sink and rinse off, but I will have my revenge. Oh yes, I will have my revenge… bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

So, moral of the story is, unless you wanna end up snorting it, don’t smell chai around your family when they are mostly practical jokers.

Now for my announcements.

Announcements:

Alright, registration for spring classes is opening soon and if you want to get in the classes you want, with the teachers you want, at the times you want, you had better be getting a jump on it. This next semester is going to be AMAZING, so do what you want with it. One way or another, I’m gonna have a great time with it.

Well, that’s all for this week. I’ll try to get plenty of pictures on the Fall Retreat this weekend. It’s gonna be epic. Expect a loooooooong blog afterwards ;P Have a great week guys!