To start with I have to say Thank You Staffers! Austin, Aj, Brittany,Clay, Emma, Jordan, Jimmy, Katie, Shelby, Sterling, and Skyler, you guys were great. Thank you to the cooks Jenny, Rachel and Shelby Z.
And a big Thank You to Daniel Solid, the Program Director for the week. He gave some really good talks on Romans 12 and Team-Building.
I was on the blue team along with Clayton, Daniel, Emilee, Evan, Justin, Joe, Lydia, Macaela, and Olivia.
Shelby and Aj were the staffers for our team.
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| The Blue Team |
Monday we came up with our team name and team chant. Our team name was: The Storm.
Tuesday: Team-Building Activities.
Below are some pictures of our team doing some of the team-building activities.
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| Our team on the box. It's really hard to get ten people on a 2-foot square box. |
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| The rope swing. Go Evan! It almost worked. |
But the bright spot of that day was when our team was doing the activity that was similar to a three-legged race only, there were ten of us doing it (picture below). At one point we weren't allowed to talk to each other so we staggered our feet and instead of saying " one, two, one, two" we said "mm, ah, mm, ah" to a beat. And Jimmy started singing a random song along with the beat. The two combined just sounded silly. It made me laugh.
Wednesday: The Hike
We spent six hours hiking Steamboat Mountain. It was probably the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen.
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| Our team on the hike. |
Definitely my favorite day of the week. The Wall, The Beam, Creek Crossing, The Giant's Finger and Island Hopping = extremely fun!
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| The Beam. Way to go Joe! |
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| Creek Crossing |
Friday: Survival Skills
We built a shelter, a dead-fall trap, a fire, a water-still and did a plant identification quiz. Just a couple of notes:
1. When judging our shelter, I don't think the staffers appreciated our clay pigeon decorations.
2. Peanut butter and jelly on tortillas gets kind of boring after having it for lunch four days in a row.
3. It's really hard to make macaroni and cheese from a box when you don't have butter or milk.
Afternoons
I think my favorite part of Survival was the afternoons. Whether it was playing Ultimate Frisbee or just sitting and talking, it was just fun to spend time with some really cool people.
One afternoon some of the guys were pretending to be bowling pins and a little girl (she was around 7 or 8 years old; her mom was there as a chaperon) would roll a ball at them and they would dramatically fall to the ground. It was hilarious.
The worship and sessions were amazing!
The hardest part was saying goodbye to everyone.
Two days after Survival we heard that one of the staffers, Jimmy Brazell, had died in a swimming accident. Even though I hardly knew him, he impacted my life.
Photo credits: Shelby Bennett, Jenny McVeda and the Survival website.
