Wilderness High Lights

Key Words to My Wilderness Experience

Diversity: I was blessed to go out into the Colorado Mountians with the most diverse group of people. At face value everyone would of seemed like a well off, white, suburbuan, kid from Carmel who has everything going for them. In reality each individual and the stuff they were dealing with in their lives could not have been different from the next person.

Illogical: Thirteen high schoolers, many of which had never slept outside, two leaders, and two guides that have minimal experience and training hiking in the premiere, beautiful, and dangerous Colorado Mountains. It did not make sense for us to make it back without getting lost or seriously hurt. It rained one day. One day for mid july in Colorado is nuts! We should have been rained on every afternoon. Clouds would roll in and I would be preparing for the rain that never came. Illogical.

Honesty: Fifteen people that barely knew each other realized what it meant to be honest with themselves, each other, and most importantly with God. We sat around telling our story, telling things we had never told any one else, bringing out the crap that we hide in the depths of ourselves usually letting it eat us from the inside out. I learned that if we are to "be Jesus to the world" we need to listen to peoples' stories, dig deep, and get at their heart to discover who they really are. Jesus does this with the Samaritan women at the well. Due to our honesty, vulnerability, and the way we loved each other we became a family.

Humility: My prayer before this trip was that of John the Baptist's: "He must become greater i must become less". Man did God answer that prayer. After the night of solo's Jenna (my co-leader) and I reconvened and both had this overwhelming feeling that we were undeserving and unqualified to be in these kids lives. I have know skills, education, or experience in many of the things that the kids were experiencing. Any effort I was to put forth to counsel or improve the kids lives would have been futile. God made me the size of an ant and him and my need for him HUGE. All I could do is show up in these kids lives and point to God.