Escape 2007

Our big outreach camp for the middle school is called Escape. After a great week in Thailand Nate and I came back and had a full plate of things to do to get ready for Escape. Many of you know and prayed about our trouble with finding staff. We had to figure out t-shirt stuff, snowboard stuff, make sure we had the bus reserved, and so on. After filling up all the spots for students, figuring out all the last minute details, and being exhausted from our busy week, our Escape 2007 retreat began at 6 o'clock on Thursday night. We met in the youth room and had all the students come in and make sure that they were all ready to go. We decided to spend the night at our youth room the first night because the bus ride to Northstar was 6 hours long and we would have arrived their super late and still had to pay for lodging. Staying at the youth room seemed so much more logical.

There was one thing that happened for sure each day of the retreat and that was our sessions. A session was pretty much a youth group where we would play a game, spend time in groups, and listen to Nate teach from the Bible. Our theme for the weekend was "The Return" coming from the story of the prodigal son. Nate taught through the story of the lost sheep and the lost coin to build up to the return of the son. We spent time talking about God's heart for us, our heart towards God, and how he desires for us to come home. During the week of preparation and during the retreat itself God was always there. I could totally see him working and orchestrating the whole thing together. It was awesome to see the students encourage each other on the slopes and to see how patient the Northstar staff was with our whole group. This retreat was really a testimony to me that God is here working in Yokosuka and that he is moving in the hearts of the students.

Northstar, the place where we went, is a Burton Learn To Ride Center. Basically, they have a sweet lodge, with a complete game room, climbing wall, and trampoline, and they are specialized in teaching people how to snowboard in a day. After we woke up at 4:30 on Friday morning and rode the bus 6 hours to Northstar, we spent two hours on the mountain taking lessons from the staff there and learning how to snowboard. I've snowboarded once before, but I've surfed and skateboarded for a good part of my life so snowboarding came pretty easy to me. Everyone, including myself, was so excited because it snowed all night Friday night and all day Saturday and so our day on the mountain was fantastic. As I said I had only snowboarded once, but I was so excited to ride on some fresh powder that day. Having the nice cushion of 3 or 4 ft of snow I got comfortable pretty fast trying new things. When we got to free ride in the afternoon one of the staff guys took us on some powder runs through the trees that were so rad. Anyways many of the students snowboarded, some were on ski’s, and some just watched, but God really blessed us this weekend with great snow and even more exciting was that throughout the whole weekend no one got hurt.

We had a great group of students, many from different religious backgrounds, and a great group of staff. I am so thankful for all the prayers that went into this weekend and I am so excited to see how God works with the seeds that were planted this weekend. Everyone was pretty sore on Sunday as we rode the bus home, but many of the students are already making sure that we go to Northstar next year. This retreat was a success and I am excited to see the impact that it has on our students and community here in Yokosuka.