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…
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