July 2nd - Shopping with Dom
Similar to last year, this event was for two purposes, to challenge the girls to bring friends and to clearly demonstrate to the ladies that they are special and should be treated like princesses. This turned out to be a very solid event. We kicked off the day with a road trip to Quail Springs Mall in OKC. Yes, this mall has three levels and 160 stores! If you, the reader, are female you may have just fainted. I'll pause for you to come back to conciousness. *pause* Oh boy, did the girls shop. They all had from 25-45 dollars on a mall-wide gift card. They would earn credit by bringing friends to the preceeding Sunday and Wednesday services and also the trip itself.
We ate in the Drive-In themed food court and then hit the stores. They tried on jewelry, clothes, took pictures, momentarily got in touble with a security guard for dropping leaves on the concessioners on the level beneath us. It was so much fun. The most laughs came from the candy store I must say. I believe that by the time we left the mall the girls had a higher sugar level in their blood than most mice in an easter basket.
But, my favorite part of the shopping experience was not pouring out my vast knowledge of contemporary fashion (whatever), but the last store we visited. It was a gown store; and almost every girl participated in dressing up and complementing each other in their adornment. It was so cool to see them feel beautiful and valuable and priceless. They were all ready to go to Cinderellas Ball. This was what the trip was all about.
The ride back was, of course, high pitched and high energied. The second half of the day is orchestrated by our AHYEAH guys. Their job is to put on a fine dinner and to wait on the ladies and their every whims. But, that's all the instruction that they have. The rest is for them to create to make the girls feel special. And did they do a GREAT job!
As we arrived at the church, there was a trail of Tiki torches leading up to the side door. We stepped in and were quickly asked to wait in the youth room. Soon, the guys asked me to escort each of the girls to a sign up table in the atrium. As the girls came out they were met with quite the tropical atmosphere. The sign up table was covered in fish nets, lays for each of the girls, island music, and all of the guys were wearing hawaiian shirts. The table was decorated with coconut cups, with palm trees and hints of the tropics everywhere. Fruit punch was brought to the table and delicately served followed by a fresh salad. The main course was italian chicken over angel hair pasta (cooked by the youth guys) and the climax of the meal was a fine desert. In the midst of the feasting the guys came out and sang to them an AHYEAH ladies chant and "Mighty Jungle."
During desert, I gave a devotional reminding them of their worth and discounting the idea they they need to impress people. What really matters when we stand before God. "Hey God, with the life you gave me I stayed tan and skinny the whole time." How silly does that sound; it's because it's not what really matters. We don't have to strive to please God, He is already overjoyed with us and is so in love with us. Each of the girls recieved a mini card of verses reminding them of who they are in Christ. It was a stellar event - thank you AHYEAH guys.
July 4th - Rockets over Rhema
Because Liberty opted not to have fireworks this year we changed our plans and attended Rhema's event. It was actually really well done. They had a concert, car show (yea) and a really sweet firework show. We found ourselves a nice little perch of grass with a front row seat to the sparklies and waited for them to start. Meanwhile, we got hungry so we pulled our money for pizza. Becaues pizza hut would not deliver, and we didn't want to lose our parking spot, Mitch and I hiked to get it. That was an adventure. We started out walking the right way, but after taking directions from some individual (who I have nothing good to say about) we ended up making a huge circle and being farther away than when we started. Long story short we returned after several hours with pizza just in time for a great fireworks show.
July 11th - All Church Event at Camp Loughridge
Abiding Harvest put on an all church picnic up at Camp Loughridge down 71st. It would be a pool party, picnic, and worship service. During the festivities AHYEAH experimented with a new game - Flour Wars. Basically you fill up a stocking sock with flour, make your own cardboard shield, split into teams and pound each other white. It was a great success. Then, tired and only needing egg to become big human cakes, we attended the worship service which was excellent.
July 14th - Kilt Making
Before our typical Fantastic Friday on Weds, we had an hour and a half of kilt making for the soon to be Vikings of AHYEAH. This was quickly followed by helmet decorating. Each guy recieved an army helmet liner to spraypaint and decorate to their liking. That's right, Viking night is around the corner.
July 17th - Viking Night
This story before the event. The entire trip was planned out a month in advance. It would be a day of canoing, an evening of Viking games and eating hog, followed by a morning of caving and then head home. It all seemed so . . . not like it was going to blow up in my face. Two weeks before, one of my leaders (Mark Smith), who has experience and was going to lead the caving part informed me that all of the non-privately owned caves in AR and TN and many other states were being shut down indefinitely. The bats that were living in the caves were getting diseases from us. Seriously? So, after a year of promising and planning that door slammed in my face. And I guarentee that I did everything possible to make this happen. All that were left, you could only enter with a paid guide costing 40-70 dollars an hour per person. SERIOUSLY!? So, that part of the trip became a morning of paintball (not as good, but not bad either). THEN (oh, yes it gets better), at 10 o'clock THE NIGHT BEFORE, a parent calls me telling me that the river has been shut down because of the water level being too high. This report was quickly followed by me calling our river guide and asking why he hadn't called. Sure enough, 32 rescues took place the day before and the river was officially closed. Did I mention that this was 10 o'clock the night before? I prayed. So, within a half hour the trip transformed from a canoing trip to an indoor rock climbing trip, plus extra viking games, and paintball.
We met for rock climbing already attired in our kilts and helmets. After blowing our arms out on the rock walls we hit the road heading for Talequah. We stayed at the nature park of the place that would have taken us canoing. Our spot was perfect. It was away from everything else, had its own pond, port-o-potty, perfect spot for a camp fire and decent tent spots. After encircling the camp with tiki torches (it looked really cool) we got the hog on the grill and slathered it with Head Country BBQ sauce (amen). The guys split into two viking clans and competed against each other the rest of the trip. Our first game was jousting. The jousting sticks were broom handles covered and reinforced with pool noodles. Next was an archery contest where almost all of them were able to experience archery for the first time. Then finally, the hog of exeptionally tender, Head Countried, 44lbs of meat was done. We hauled it out of the grill and slammed it on the table. We poured half a jar of BBQ sause directly on the table and dug in. It was amazing and soooooo . . . Viking-ish. Yum. After filling our bellies with hog and grape juice it was time to go to war. Each man was given a shield to duct tape to their arm (made of a pizza pan wrapped in pool noodle). They they had their choice of either a Roman Sabre (2 and 1/2 foot sword made of pvc pipe and noodle) or a William Wallace (5ft sword made of pvc pipe and obvously very handy pool noodle). Using the dirt road as a battlefield the clans battled over and over again until dark. It was fun. The night closed with one more game that lasted till past one in the morning, 'Plunder.' Basically, each team member would try to carry a gold token from the camp to a set up spot about a quarter mile away. They would have to carry it in stealth because the leader were wandering the woods and road with flashlights and if you were flashed with light you had to go back to the beginning. The next morning it was several hours of beastly paintball and these Vikings were ready for a shower and . . . another shower. :)
July 26th - 30th - EXTREME CAMP
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Wow. Where to begin? This year we left the church with the largest group yet. We took 26 youth, 2 youth leaders, and 3 adult leaders = 31 God-hungry people headed for Teen Mania's Extreme Camp in Darlington TX. Whew, what a crew. We rented two 15 passenger vans and took our own church bus which was preloaded with refridgerant so we had air conditioning. Amen. God was about to do great things and we could feel it.
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However our first and now imfamous story did not feel, nor does it feel, like a God-moment. Several hours into our trip we decided to stop for lunch and found a Dairy Queen available for our service. Recognizing that there was no parking adequate for our church bus, I aimed to seek parking on the otherside of the building. The only route available was to drive around the outside of the drive-thru which was surrounded by a tall security fence. All was fine, plus there were no cars in the drive-thru to worry about . . . so peachy. As I approaced the bend to the left I saw that it was going to be a tight corner, so I clicked into gear and calculated all my angles. As I entered the turn I heard from behind me, "Dom, your not going to make it!" I'm thinking, "Of course I'm going to make it, you dufus neighsayer." Then suddenly - CRUNCH - they were right. No, I did not hit the fence, nor the wall, nor any other vehicle. There was a 6' wide overhang on the building that I was not aware of . . . until now. I was so focused on the turn that I missed . . . ya.
I backed out and getting on Justin's shoulders I saw that the very corner tile of the roof was imbedded into our bus roof. So, after ripping the tile out I took it and handed it to the DQ manager. :( Grunt.
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On to the good stuff. We arrived where I went to get us checked in. The first thing that happened was that half of the paperwork that I sent in did not make it to the desk of the person checking us in. Ah ha, amazing Mrs. Terri predicted this and recommended that I make copies of everything; so, Amen, I handed him all of the missing paperwork - Yea God! Secondly, of the paperwork, about a quarter of our youth did not have the necissary insurance and half did not fill out their immunization charts. I knew that the insurance was a problem, but I assumed that immunization charts were optional for kids who needed special treatment. These were apparently large problems. So the day hadn't already been eventful enough. Then, as if prompted by God, our check-in guy looked up and said something to the effect of, "It's most important that your here, I'll clear all of this paperwork for ya." WHOA!!!! THANK YOU JESUS. God is AWESOME! So, I promised that none of our youth would allow themselves to die and we shook hands and went to claim our dorms and bunks. (Yes, I will definitely remember for next year.)
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Services: We had two sessions (services) each day. One after lunch and one after dinner. They were excellent. The very first service brought in the presence of God and His Holy Spirit. The worship was even better than last year with deeper songs and more genuine musicians. Our first speaker was Matt Pitt who was very challenging. That night we had multiple rededications and two salvations. Amen! In my experience, the powerful night is usually the last but not for Extreme Camp. It was definitely quite a kick off. Another session was our AHYEAH favorite Aaron Davis who spoke on passion in every apect of our lives. Next was Ron Luce (founder of Teen Mania) who conveyed to the youth the meaning of being cleaned up by God and used the refurbishing of an old mustang as the example. During an afternoon, they split up the guys and the girls for a purity (sex) talk. For our guys, I don't think the speaker was as relevant as needed. The agreeing opinion among our guys was that the speaker layed out more of a list of rules and not so much tools. However, our girls recieved one of the top-rated women's speakers in the country (whose name I can't remember) and had a blast. They came back all stoked about their session. Finally, our last speaker was Randy Olsson, a former military guy who held all the records on the Extreme Camp high ropes course. He conveyed that when we get back to the world of school, friends, and pressures we'll either stand strong or compromise. He illistrated his point as a wrestling match where it either ends with a tap-out or passing out. To show this he called up all the biggest guys in the audience and demonstrated the sleeper hold (rear naked choke), and completely accidentally and without any physical pressure or intent knocked the guy unconcious. It was hilarious. He didn't realize that he did it and accidentally dropped him. After some slapping and laughs the hoss-of-a-teenager came to and gladly returned to his seat. LOL.
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Concerts: Our concerts featured Mike's Chair, Leeland, and the David Crowder Band. Mike's chair was a ton of fun; David Croweder is always amazing and showed off their robotic drum set named Steve-3-P-O; and Leeland really showed off their heart for Christ by having a worship service in the middle of their concert.
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Sports: In all of the events, each youth group had their own country name and competed against the other groups. We were Sri Lanka (sp?). Oh, and we dominated with points in everything we did.
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Many of our youth were afraid of heights, however all of them did some element of high ropes. I was so proud. The star element was a swing where they haul some individual on a swing 30' into the air and release them. This is often followed by screams and giggles. Many of them also did the Leap of Faith. This is a 30' pole that you climb up with a partner and turn and face a trapeze that is grinning at you from 6' away suspended in mid air. Then, you and your partner jump simultaneously and grab the trapeze together. This is truly the test of nerves and encouragement of one's partner. I had the pleasure of doing this with Cody Brown. We both made it to the trapeze and walked on clouds the rest of the day. Several of our youth also did the Jacob's ladder and many other elements.
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Paintball was alot of fun, we suffered only minor bruising and of course had fun. Our first competetory sport was dodge ball where be battled well and came out on top with both games, despite questionable ethics from the other team. Human foose ball was also alot of laughs. We won one and lost one game, but had fun getting to know another team. Also, we played ultimate frisbee where we competed against the same team as dodge ball with similar ethical challenges. First of all, their youth leader was a football coach who was great in stature. In one instance the frisbee was caught by our very sweet Anna who doesn't weigh 80lbs. This guy hover's over her, basically blocking any sunlight from her world and eventually rips the frisbee out of her hands (which is against the rules as it is). I was near losing my cool, but a comment loudly enunciated by our Daniel Dickie made everything OK. As this guy went all brutal on our little sister and took off with her frisbee, Daniel yells, "Hey, why don't you steal Christmas too!" HaHaHa - Much love to ya Dan. This game was followed by extreme soccer which was amazing and so much fun. We really pushed and fought, and guys at AHYEAH who are not really athletic came out strong and went all out. On Thursday we went to a water park. The camp rented the entire thing for us. We had so much fun and because it was overcast we didn't get too cooked. It was awesome.
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Funny Storys: One of our youth, who will remain nameless, was in the act of super-gluing pennies to the underside of someone's bed as a practical joke. The super-glue backfired and went into his eyes, glueing his eyes completely shut. Him and the guys rubbed everything under the sun on his eyes until finally ending up with his head in the shower pealing his eyes open. After confessing to Dave and I, we prayed over him (giggling) and got him some more eye drops. His vision was normal and unaffected, just his eye-lids recieved the glue (amen). The next morning he stood for several mintues pealing super-glue out of his eyelashes.
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Another story. The dorms are set up as looooong tents basically which can house maybe 80 kids. With the bus incident still fresh on my mind, I was walking to the opposite end of where we were staying to plug in my phone. Suddenly, I heard me a huge crash behind me. I turned around to see a crowd around a bunk bed which had obviously caved in. It was surrounded by youth of the other youth groups and our guys were innocently far at the opposite end. Thinking of all the consequenses of trashing a bunk bed and the liability involved I whispered under my breath, "I'm glad I'm not that kid's youth pastor." Then out of the middle of the bunk and crowd popped a familiar face. From within the caved bunk came Mikey with his hands triumphantly in the air in pride of his latest conquest. I WAS this kid's youth pastor. (exhale) "Your funny, God."
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On the way back, it of course was not uneventful. After leaving late we were on a tight schedule to get back. We "quickly" stopped for a potty break where I strictly told them to get back by a certain time. After many decided to buy drinks and snacks we ran over that time so I told everyone it was time to go and we were leaving. Waddling back out came one of our youth. One of the leaders asked him what was wrong and he admitted that he had diahrea (sp), but was going to hold it. The leader released him and said that we'd wait and he sprinted back to the bathrooms. I'm not sure of the whole story, but this led to a clogged toilet that none of the youth could unclog, but didn't want to leave it. This escalated to a, not kidding, broken plunger. How do you snap a plunger? But it happened. We left the money for a new one with the owner and got on the road.
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I'm now going to close these stories with an appropriate bible verse. John 21:25 (Extreme Camp paraphrase) - And there are also many other things that happened, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written."
