Fall Weekend

Today I came home from fall weekend. This year we went to Camp Kern in Orgonia with 3 guys and 8 girls. Most of them have been coming around long enough to have all been to either camp, fall weekend or both before, but as we stopped having club for the rest of semester for lack of vision among our group we thought this would be a really good opportunity to re-inspire a desire for Young Life to be a tool for sharing Christ.

The weekend started with Wyoming's win in the quarter finals of the State Football Playoffs. That makes them regional champs! It was a great game that Wyoming really dominated expect for poor clock management and turnovers in the red zone. I think the school they played might have had 150 yards of total offense in the game, and their only scoring drive had a huge freak play. Ultimately the better team won, which, yea for us, was Wyo. They next play on Friday night a Dayton's Welcome Stadium (worst field name in all of sports...possibly). The Stadium was/is really awesome though. There is a ton of parking and the field is really nice. The only drawback is that the stands are somewhat distant from the field because of a track, and if it's the same announcer as last week he sounds like he's calling a pirates game on a 110 degree day in august. It was a lot of fun being at the game Friday in part because as they get further in the playoffs a ton of graduates are coming back to see the games and I've had the opportunity to catch up with a lot of them. I think in their eyes being there still in a way adds credibility to the time I spent with them when they were in high school. So the football game ended at about 10PM in Dayton. We left ASAP and arrived about 10 minutes before club started (perfect).

For me it was sort of added fun because the speaker was a guy named Randy Nickels (spelling?) who was the guy who spoke at Champion when I was on Work Crew. Since then he has been running all over the world (Africa & Scotland) starting Young Life and sharing Christ with communities there. He was a pretty good speaker as far as speakers go. he didn't use and illustration really, but I still thought that his presentation of the gospel was clear and understandable. I felt like talking with kids about stuff (granted we took Christians) was easy and productive for their faith and fellowship as well and their vision for what Young Life could be if they wanted to invest in it. I guess like anything else though it's easy to be excited about things while they are happening and hard to follow through went the payoff is far away. All in all though, I felt good about the way things went. Maybe the focal point of the weekend, or at least the part I will most remember happened Saturday afternoon while all the guys were playing soccer. I jumped up in the air and came down wrong on my left ankle. I sprained it pretty badly and was rolling around writhing in pain for a few minutes (waiting for the hurt to go away). After a couple minutes I had some ice, and I was sitting on the field with my ankle resting on the ice. A group of people were standing around (like people do when someone gets hurt) and out of nowhere this football comes on a line drive right through a gap in the semicircle of people standing over me and blasts me right in the face. I guess these other kids where kicking field goals about 20 yards away and shanked one right at me. At the time, it hurt a lot (amazingly no one laughed) but it was really funny thinking about it now. Unfortunately my ankle is jank and will be for a while. I can walk, but it's not comfy for sure. Hopefully I'll be able to get my boots on tomorrow otherwise I have to go see a doctor...my work is sort of dumb about missing a day.

In spite of getting hurt & sleeping on a sheet of plywood I did have a really great time, and I think it was good for everyone who went. Now I am just looking forward to working a little and eating a lot this week as well as the STATE SEMI FINALS on Friday!