Alaska 2012: Part 2

And we’re back at it. I left you guys at the end of our first day at camp. That brings us to the morning of our first full day in Alaska. Fortunately, we had a fairly loose schedule on that first Sunday, so we got to sleep in until 8:30am before waking up for our morning devotionals. Well, we were supposed to be able to sleep in until 8:30 at least… I remember waking up to the lights flashing on as Andrew tells us all to wake up because it was 8:30. I knew my alarm hadn’t gone off yet, so I was a little suspicious of the validity of that statement. I checked my phone, and it said it was only 5:50am. Apparently my filter shuts off while I sleep because I was very blunt in my response to him… “It’s only 5:50, turn off the stupid lights!” I may or may not have followed that with another unfiltered statement and then fell right back asleep. 8:00 rolled around and our bunk house was up and moving yet again. I still didn’t understand why we were getting up a half hour before our scheduled wake up time, but it sure was better than 5:50, so I accepted it and crawled my way out of my sleeping bag into the chilly room. I was one of the last two people to officially make my way out of the boys’ side of the bunk house at 8:15 and began to see all that God had in store for this devotional time. The majority of us on this trip struggled with setting aside time for God on a daily basis, yet all of the guys (yes, the guys) were out starting our devotions 15 minutes earlier that the scheduled wake up time. It was obvious that time was going to play a significant role in our spiritual growth throughout the trip. We spent our time with God in devotions until breakfast at 9:30. After breakfast, we headed on over to the only church within 20 miles for our Sunday service. Without our team there, this church probably had a congregation of around 10, including the pastor and his wife. With as many issues as this church has experienced in the last three years since I was last there, the people demonstrated comfortability. They were comfortable with our team filling their church. They were comfortable with the works of the Lord in their lives. I loved to see how Pastor Larry would ask for desired hymns to sing, and people were just chomping at the bit to get their suggestions in. After the service, we headed back to camp and ate lunch quick before our first Alaskan adventure. After we ate, we made our way out to the Matanuska glacier. I always enjoy visiting the glacier, I mean, really, how often does a person get to say they hiked on top of a glacier? The staff must have been tipped off on the rowdiness of our group or something because we had far more restrictions on the hike than we had in years past. Generally, we’ve been able to split up and explore the glacier in smaller groups of our own, but the Eaglecrest staff were leading the hike and attempting to keep our group of 38 all together without any sidetracking. Nothing against their attempt to follow their orders, keep us safe, or whatever it may have been, but this just isn’t a group to try and be controlled like that; it only makes people want to explore all that more. That’s why we have a group of leaders we feel comfortable with leading the team. But all in all, it was still fun for the group to experience hiking a glacier. After returning from that adventure, it was time for our campfire discussion. This was campfire #2, and you could fairly easily tell. Discussion was opening up, but you can only get so far with a group of people that don’t know each other much at all for the most part. With that said, we were still progressively opening up more and more. The excitement was continuing to grow.

To be continued…

Alaska 2012: Part 1

Ten days ago, 38 people gathered themselves together at the ugly hour of 3:30am to begin their journey on a trip nobody could have ever imagined. In all my trips with Real Life/Anthem Student Ministries, this team was probably the most diverse group I have seen as far as students from different groups of friends goes. Especially during my time as a student on all of these trips, it seemed as though it was always the same group of amazing people that went on trips together. This was definitely a different taste, and I had no idea how that would turn out for this trip. I will just say this… this year marked my third trip to Alaska, and the third time was definitely a charm.

Day one was quite the whirlwind of travel. 4am departure from church… three hour drive to Chicago (6am Central time arrival)… approximately three and a half hours of waiting in the airport for our 9:40am flight… seven hour flight to Anchorage (about 1:30pm Alaska time arrival)… topped off with an hour and a half drive in three jam packed 15-passenger vans plus two trucks full of our luggage to arrive at camp in Sutton, AK around 3pm. That would be 7pm back here in Michigan for a nice 15 hours of travel. Surprisingly enough, as dinner time at camp rolled around, it actually felt like dinner time, and we had seemingly already adjusted to the new time zone. Fortunately, all we had planned for the first night was dinner and campfire with free time in between. I don’t think we could have physically managed to do much more than that. It was exciting to see any inhibitions of a group that didn’t know each other very well disappear. We got to camp, unloaded all of our luggage, and headed right outside to play like a bunch of little kids in the school yard. Naturally, with the adventurous personality of our group as a whole, it didn’t take but a couple of hours for a group of us to get a mini lecture after having a little extra fun. Rule number one… no playing down by the river side! After dinner, we moved on to our first campfire of the week, and Roger introduced to the team what the week was going to look like, including daily devotionals in the mornings and campfires every night. With 38 people in our group, we had a few worries about doing a large group discussion every night. With that many people, it can be all too easy for people sit back and not say anything. With that thought, we did have small groups planned out in case we needed to break the group up to encourage more people to take the chance to talk. We started each campfire with everybody sharing our ‘God-Sightings’ from the day. I think taking the opportunity to have everybody talk about the ways we saw God moving through our day was the key to comfort around the campfire. You could see the first night that the group was already starting to open up as a whole and everybody was willing to talk. This was just the start of how we grew together as a family throughout the trip. Finally, it was time for bed. Without any darkness to fall asleep to, mind you. But this thought of never ending light was the beginning of all to come.

Well, my brain is beginning to shut down, and I don’t want to waste time filling space with empty words, so I will return to catching you all up on our amazing journey tomorrow. Until then, thanks for loving this team and having the desire to watch God work through our lives.

To be continued…