OLD School with Project LEAD

Okay, so I'm trying to catch up my blog on my life...so that maybe there can be some semblance of order to future posts. I was going to work backwards and talk about most recent things and go through the summer that way...but I'm way too anal for that. So, instead, I'm going to try transplant myself back to the begininng of my summer and go through all the awesome things I did and talk about them. I feel like this is kind of a cheating way of blogging...I mean, if I was blogging about things as they happened that would probably be much more intriguing...but I guess I'll have to just say take what you can get with me. :) That's just kind of how I roll.

Before I start discussing OLD School and the Project LEAD trip, I will say I went into this summer already stressed. I looked at my schedule, realizing I would rarely be in Macon and had a ton of places to be and was ready to throw in the towel of productivity. I realize this is ridiculous- especially since so many of my trips (actually all of them) were awesome opportunities and projected to be great fun, but I'm a structured person, and so being away from home so much and not being able to focus and organize everything about my summer was stressing me out. But the cool thing is, God has taught me a lot about stresss this summer. Really, God has taught me a lot about Himself in general, and I think it took me not having control over everything for me to learn these lessons. I don't know if that makes any sense at all...but it seems to have worked as I have really worked to give my time to the Lord and he has blessed me immensly through that. So anyways, let's start with the Project LEAD trip:

Project LEAD is a student leadership organization at FPD that I work with. We were excited to have a big group this year and really excited about participating in this program I found in my internet research called OLD School. OLD School is Outdoor Leadership and Discipleship School and is a wilderness/backpacking program through a Christian Camp called Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters. Our Project LEAD group was divided into 2 groups- one co-ed and one all girls. My group was the all girls group and it was awesome (I'm sure the other group was awesome too..but obviously I got to experience my group's awesomeness first hand). Our group also included 2 guides- Meredith and Rachel who were wonderful.

The trip consisted of lots of different adventuresome things--- this is how our week looked:
Monday-- spend night at basecamp

Tuesday-- hike about 8 miles
I will say that this was a tough hike definitely. It was our first day, our packs were heavy but luckily we were enthusiastic and so it worked out great. We stayed together as a group and it was awesome to see the girls encourage each other and work together to keep moving even when we were really hot and tired. We camped on the trail and had fun trying to build a fire that night (i.e. it took forever to build a fire but we made it happen).

Wednesday-- hike about 6 miles, canoe to peninsula
We hiked back down the mountain this day-- which was also tough. I enjoyed hiking along and talking with Meredith (one of our guides) and Lauren (one of the students)...we would stay back to allow everybody some time to get ahead and had fun discussing books, beliefs, etc. Its a cool opportunity to meet with other believers. I think God often puts people in our lives in random situations like that to teach us and remind us of the things we can so often forget in our day to day interactions (even with other Christians). Once we got down the mountain we had a crazy rainstorm which is always fun so we had to wait to go canoeing to our next campsite. Once the thunderstorm stopped we canoed over to the peninsula. My canoe partner was Alyson (student) and I must say that Alyson and I have some awesome canoeing chemistry. We had a ton of fun doing 360s in the middle of the lake waiting for everybody. We camped there that night--- staying up late and praying bears couldn't swim.

Thursday- "cliff" jump, canoe, rafting, rainstorm
Before canoeing back to get picked up to go rafting, we had the opporutnity to climb some rocks and jump into the lake...it was about a 30 ft jump and I will say I was definitely scared...but I'm glad I did it. The highlight of Thursday, though, was definitely rafting the Nantahala River. Our group had quite the rafting trip- as the water was freezing, it torrentially rained on us for a while, and both me and one of my students (Sydney) got pretty roughed up. It was an awesome time- even getting smashed into a rock :). That night we camped at a more legit "campground" with flushing toilets which was nice...but it thunderstormed pretty bad and so we pretty much eneded up sleeping in puddles, but it was okay because we still had fun.

Friday- mountain biking, base camp, Huddle House, not sleeping
Friday morning a few of us got up and went mountain biking which was awesome, especially because of how muddy it was from all the rain the night before. I wrecked/fell off the bike twice and we all got ridiculously muddy. One of my favorite pictures of the whole trip is me and Lauren ridiculously muddy. That night we slept back at basecamp...they actually gave us a cabin which was awesome, but we didn't sleep. We took our awesome guides to Huddle House and then sat in the van for a couple hours talking and just hanging out.

Saturday- home sweet home

Let me just say that this week with Project LEAD was awesome. Throughout the week, my group was studying the book of 1st Peter. It was cool to sit with my students and hear them really hash out what the Lord was saying through these words. And Meredith and Rachel were awesome leaders- I was so impressed by their biblical knowledge and ability to lead discussion. That is an area that I always feel deficient in- knowing how to lead group discussions and being with them (people my age, even a little younger, that were confident in this) definitely gave me a desire to study the word more to have a better understanding of it. In fact, being a Snowbird in general really helped me in my journey with knowing Jesus. I was reminded of the importance of true and intense study of the word and specifically of memorization of scripture. This is something that I have carried on through the summer and I'm looking forward to continuing this growth. In fact, the more I really take the time to sit and study God's word, the more I want to. Also, just to give a Snowbird plug- if you are looking for some good teachings to listen to look up Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters on itunes. The main preacher for them is this guy Brody and he is defintiely legit.

With all that being said, I think that God have the perfect plan for my summer-- especially starting out with this trip, plus I made 2 great friends in Meredith and Rachel which was awesome. Oh, and this trip is also what inspired me to try to turn my cell off for at least an hour a day...and I must say that was a great decision in general. I'm super addicted to my "crackberry" and so turning it off for an hour a day (which i dont always do but I'm trying) is a great time to just be away from it and allow me to focus on other things and not be so dependent on a stupid little machine.

Anyways, be looking for the contiuned saga of my summer...I believe I'll be talking about the Whipple Hill User Conference next. So if you're a nerd...be sure to tune into that post :).