so i went to the youth winter retreat for my oregon church (oasis) this past weekend. it was really good to get to know the kids better, and i think this experience helped a lot in breaking the ice with the kids because i'm so new. nothing like spending 48 straight hours with them. haha. and i think it helped that i killed at dodgeball. i love chucking things. but it's also the reason i'm incredibly incredibly sore. on sunday morning i couldn't move any part of my body without pain, and i could barely get out of bed. and it felt like my hip was out of its socket - like my right leg was longer than my left leg - and it was easier to walk in a circle than in a straight line. and i couldn't bend over easily at all to tie my shoes or pick something up off the ground. and it hurt to laugh. crazy getting old.
we played an organized game(s) of dodgeball on friday and that was pretty much it for me. the kids kept organizing their own games throughout the weekend, and i was like, dang, these kids never get tired and sore. i used to be like that. but no more.
the kids in general are pretty different from ecc kids. way more of the laid back, skaterish emo type as opposed to the more preppy, more high-strung, more nerdy ecc kids. it was way less structured than ecc youth retreats, but i think the kids still got a lot out of it. and i did too. the speaker challenged us to ask ourselves "does christianity work?" growing up in the church i never wrestled with questions about christianity; i never really asked why i just took it as truth. but after becoming a youth counselor and getting asked some really tough questions (why does God allow suffering?) i've realized that i really don't have any answers or even a sufficient foundation to begin to answer these questions. and it has challenged me to delve into these fundamental questions. it makes your faith that much more meaningful when you really find these answers for yourself. i always go into these things thinking i'm going to be helping out the kids when, in fact, it seems the kids are always teaching me something or challenging me. it's good stuff.
it's cool being involved in a different church system so i get more perspective on what's fundamentally the same in all churches and how some things may work better than others. hopefully i'll end up back at ecc at some point. all up to God though, eh? (the best thing to come out of canada, the "eh".) haha.
God is good? all the time! all the time? God is good!
lots of random pics ~200 that i didn't really bother to sort or delete the bad ones. we had an eating relay with smoked oysters as one of them. i'm glad i couldn't smell.
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