Snow, Mountains, Ridgecrest

This weekend I had the awesome opportunity to go to Ridgecrest, N.C and help with a discipleship focused retreat for middle and highschool students. I went with Jacob, Alex, Cody, Andrew, Ches, Jessica, Aaren, Anna, Abbie, Prisca, and Summer. Mike, his wife Helen, Ashley, Cyndi, and Nanette (cyndi's friend) were our chaparones. Without going into too many of the unimportant details about the trip, I'll describe my feelings and have a massive brain dump.

people or things i enjoyed or thought were funny:

• creating new friends (jessica and cody) and having honest conversations with people I already knew (andrew, jacob, mike)
  
• our room ('cept the toilet... cody...)
  
• frozen lake and ducks/swans
• music1- the music was from buckhead (yea, thats my awesome church) and i actually got a chance to talk to carlos who is an incredible yet humble person (he also wore a funny head wrap when i saw him walking around)
• music2- they sang (its kinda bad that i can remember this) Take it All (Hillsong), From the Inside Out (more Hillsong), Everlasting God (Chris Tomlin?), No One Like You (David Crowder Band), Glory to God (unreleased Steve Fee)... but the whole experience was wonderful (except for the little girl that gave me weird looks when i sang... ) and freeing... it was so inspiring to see kids from my group with smiles on their faces as they sang. simply a smile...
• watching the sheer joy and excitement on Ches's face as he played with snow for the first time
• zaxby's
• getting stuck (temporarily) in an elevator with a bunch of ppl
• harvard taking really neat photos
• rocking out in the minivan
• watching others
• this slide place in the stairway
  
  

things i didn't like or that bothered me (this isnt a rant or anything):

• i was battling a really bad cold, but i discovered something called NyQuill which was an experience...
• i also had an epic battle for a small life... with a friend... over 300 miles away... that drained me...
  
• the food... (it made brittan look really good...)
• large group teaching... it seemed disconnected, the kids (and me) kinda zoned out after about 10 minutes. i honestly felt like i was in class, in a lecture
• small town churches- my hometown church used to be a small town church, but we've been really blessed and grown in numbers and leadership... many of these kids seemed scared to talk about things because as one kid said "if you keep doing it [I dont remember what he was referring to] then you'll go to Hell..." which is true in a sense, but here it seemed to mean dont talk about it, or people will think you are going to hell...
• Throughout the weekend, i kept hearing "churchy" answers to "churchy" questions which really bothered me, i wasn't convinced these kids really knew how to apply these lessons in their everyday lives. one of the points of christianity is not to stop and think about the rules, but to obey God without thinking... pure instinct
• the cold wasnt something i really enjoyed...
• we had to wake up at 6:45 one day...

i enjoyed ridgecrest, and i think God used it to strengthen areas of my life i usually dont get the opportunity to do... such as supporting a teacher and hanging out with highschoolers...