Danger in Denver

It's been another really interesting week here with IV. Whereas last week was centered mostly around Sexy Pizza, this week has been almost entirely consumed with prep for Chapter Camp this year.

What's Chapter Camp, you ask? It's our annual region-wide week-long retreat held at Bear Trap Ranch at the end of each Spring. It is, in a word, incredible. I likely explain about it more in depth later, but for now I'll say that we center the whole week around a set of passages, which students study in the mornings and hear talks on in the evenings. There is a time of "creative response" each day as well, and I have the privilege of being on the creative response team this year. That meant a trip to Denver this week to meet with the rest of the team as well as the "manuscript team" - those who are responsible for leading the morning study sessions and really try to get across the main points of the passage.

The trip lasted from Tuesday through Thursday, and while out-of-town business trips aren't generally known for being "relaxing", it was certainly a nice change of pace for me. I ended up canceling my discipleship group and handing the small group over to another leader (who I hear did a bang up job; thanks Marcie!), so I had a lot less work to do for the week; just go out and study the Bible for several days.

However, the trip was anything but uneventful. Hans and I both woke up feeling sick on Tuesday morning, meaning that for the whole trip we were fighting our illness through sleep deprivation and the occasional sugar/caffeine downer. A note of warning: if you are starting to come down with something, a diet of Sour Patches, Cadbury Eggs, chocolate, Coke, and coffee might not be the best idea.... So anyway Hans and I flew out, only to find that the guy who was supposed to rent the car to take us from the airport had missed his flight and wouldn't be able to make his way out until about 9 that night. We waited in the airport for a few hours, had lunch, and met up with the next group of staff leaving, at which point we found out that another two staff workers coming out of Flagstaff were delayed several hours - something about their plane smoking in the terminal - so they also wouldn't be out until late that night.

We went to the church we were meeting in and decided to study the first couple of sections. I must say, it's a blast doing this kind of in-depth study with a bunch of other staff. We got to spend hours looking at a passage and evaluating what it was saying and how we would get that message to the students. That led to some great passage-related conversations like can God change His mind or do we consider the Angel of the LORD to be a pre-incarnate Jesus. To study these topics with such a knowledgeable group was a real treat.

We also got a fair amount of time to just hang out and relax a bit, whether that meant going out to dinner or playing some Mario Kart at the house many of us were staying at. I've decided that I really like hanging around IV staff, especially in down time.

The week still had one more curve-ball for us, though. Wednesday morning we got a call that one of the guys (in fact, one of the speakers we were learning from, who also happened to get in late on the smoking plane) had been hit by a car when he was out for a morning run. Thankfully, it was a small Smart Car going relatively slowly, and so he didn't have any noticeable injuries, but x-rays at the hospital revealed fractured ribs. He wouldn't be joining us for any study. It's truly a blessing that he is doing as well as he is; the situation could have been so much worse if it changed only slightly. Please pray for him, though, as he recovers. I'm sure the flight back alone wasn't a wonderful experience for him.

We finished the study on Thursday, and so the creative response team was able to get together to go over the things we want to do for each day. I can't really say much about the study or what we'll be doing, but I'm really excited to see what will come out of them during Chapter Camp!

I managed to get back into Albuquerque Thursday at about 7:15 - just enough time to get my car and go straight to Large Group. It was a good meeting, and we were able to study Jesus as the bread from heaven, but man was I wiped out the whole time. I was really glad to be there, though.

We also got pretty much a final count that night for our upcoming spring conference: Cresciendo en Christo. It's this coming weekend, so please be praying for it. We're going to be down in Socorro going through the book of Titus and seeing how we are called to live Godly lives in response to God's work in us. I'll be leading a couple studies for the weekend, so please pray for effectiveness for me as well. In any case, it looks like we'll have at least 25 students going, meaning that over half of our chapter will be there! Even more exciting is that some of these students have only just recently joined IV, so they are really showing an eagerness to get involved. I also know of one girl who is bringing her younger brother, who isn't a very strong Christian (if one at all) but who is willing to give the retreat a try. Please join me in praying for all of these students. It's really a blessing that so many are willing to come, and I hope that now we can bless them with a great experience on the retreat.

"The LORD replied, 'My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.'"
- Exodus 33:14