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…
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