Camping!

I just got back from the camping trip! Well, I first got home and checked my fb, then I snapped some green beans for my dad, then I took a shower and washed my hair numerous times, then I helped prepare dinner, then I ate dinner, then I decided it was time to write in my blog :). So! Now, I shall describe!

It started Sunday. I went to church, having packed most of my belongings the night before and that morning. At sunday school, we learned some more about how technology can take over your life, and in the sermon, Pastor Curt talked about The Honest Truth?! Then, we went out for lunch with the Anklesarias minus the misses, and then came back to church and packed the duffel bags, tents, sleeping bags, pillows, food, and equipment. Then, I hopped into Caitlin's car, and we were off :).

Caitlin and I were outrageously hyper at first, and screamed and/or laughed maniacally at random moments. We do this regularly. We listened to some pretty jammin songs, and sang into the microphones in Caitlin's car. In the middle of the drive, Luke and Philip joined us, and we had some deep discussions about abortion, and then about good and evil and God's existence and morality... etc.

We FINALLY got to Big Bend WV after a long ride in the car. It wasn't tedious though, it was fun :). The scenery was BeAuTiFuL, and all we could do was squeal, ooh, ahh, and talk about God's creation. My answer to "How do you know God exists?" is creation. I know its a lot more complicated than that, but for me, it's enough.

We then set up camp, sang songs around the camp fire, had s'mores (best part), then a nice devotional about Ephesians 4:29-32 and Romans 12:9-21 and it was all about kindness and compassion and not letting any unwholesome talk come out of our mouths. This was a sort of theme for the camping trip, and the challenge was to follow these verses completely with thankful hearts, and not let any unwholesome talk come out of our mouths. I loved it, personally. It was a wonderful exercise for me, as I'm sure it was for everyone else. It was harder than you might think. We learned that what you might think is just a joke may mean something entirely different to someone else, and the consequences that come from that are never good. A huge thing I learned was one verse we read... "And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption." (Eph. 4:30) The Lord grieves over the way we speak. I thought that was a good enough reason not to talk that way.

Okay! I'm back! I just got eight hours of sleep and finished reading Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception (so good!) Now, I can finish describing.

So that night I slept in a tent with Noely, Jenna, and Lily. Well, I didn't really sleep, persay. No one really did the first night, except Luke who apparently slept like a rock on his fluffy air matress. That night, we named this supposed bug that wouldn't go away "Alfredo Al". In the morning, we found out it was a leaf. No wonder it didn't go away...

We had breakfast that morning, along with another devotion. Then, we decided to go tubing on the river! Almost everyone went around twice, once before lunch, and once after. The second time around, we were able to go on this rope swing, and jump into the river. That was fun :). And then we went through this short cut, that had a ton more rapids and was a ton more scary! You came out of this short cut on a sort of rapid-slide thing that everyone enjoyed going down in their tubes. You would come out into this area where everyone swam around. Now, some people decided to go down this rapid-slide thing without their tubes. This was quite hilarious from my point of view, since I wasn't the one doing it. Whenever someone went down, there would be many "OW! Oohh! OWCH! Ah!"s on the way down. Once, Luke tried to go down it by walking, but he fell... and well, it was painful and hysterical to watch. People kept doing it and hurting themselves, and it was just too funny :).

Jenna and I decided to leave early, so we grabbed our tubes and were going to hike back instead of drive. Well, neither Jenna nor I have much sense of direction, and we found ourselves taking roads at random to find our way back to our camp. It was a work-out, lemme tell you, and we were frolicking with joy by the time we actually found it. We went into our tent and kind of layed around for a bit before the others got back.

We had dinner (yummy hamburgers) and enjoyed another round of s'mores, songs, and devotion. During it, Caitlin and I made up something we like to call the "Mushroom Boost", referring to the boost you get in Mario Kart the video game, where you suddenly go really fast by the mushroom boost. I won't go into detail at this point, but it was pretty much hilarious and pretty much super fun. (AHHAHAH!!!)

We then had a little session of making up stories, where each person says a sentence, and that was fun. Stories about Vladamire, and monsters in the closet... etc. That night, I slept in the other tent with Katie, Grace, and Caitlin. The boys decided to be uncivil and attempted at pranking us. They came up, as quietly as they could (which failed; I knew they were there) and shook our tents, screaming like maniacs. Then, they made "shhhhhhh"ing sounds like they were letting out the air in Caitlin's tires, which was funny, because I knew they didn't actually do it, but Caitlin was convinced ;). Then, we tried to sing Grace asleep by singing the Mockingbird lullaby which none of us could really remember. Then, we went to sleep, and I actually did sleep this time :).

Next morning it was time to go. We had breakfast, packed up our things, and set off. Luke, Philip and I were in Caitlin's car, which halfway through changed to Albert and Nathan and I. We had Chick-Fil-A for lunch, which was yummy, and then finally got back to the church on time, where my mother picked Luke, Nathan and I up, gave Nate a ride, and then took us home. It was an awesome trip, and I'm so glad I went! Caitlin asked if we would have gone if we had known all about our kindess theme, and all I can say is I would have been even more excited if I'd known! It was such a great time together to get to know each other better, and I thouroughly enjoyed it :) Today, I'm going to watch Moulin Rouge with Caitlin, which I'm excited about since I've been wanting to see it all summer! :D Lots of fun, and I thank God so much for this experience :).