Forklift 2008: A Hero Will Rise!
Now I realize it was like two weeks ago, but I am a slacker, so here goes my delicious forklift recap!!!
It
started out in a wonderful parking lot on Ocean Beach Highway in Longview, WA!! Four leaders and eleven students later
we were all packed into the ARK, the explorer and the Subaru, headed to Pendleton, OR. We had a delicious first half of our
drive and we stopped for some food at a BK lounge (Burger King) in The Dalles Oregon. We had some delicious grub and tried to
get our out of control tarp to do what it needed to do, and then we headed down the road again!!
When we arrived in Pendleton most
of the group headed to the hotel parking lot, and Missy's car headed to check in at the school. We all got to the hotel, and
got settled in our room, and then we headed to the vert for the opening session which was delicious also. Two girl had posters
that said fork, and lift, and started a crowd cheer to get everyone off their feet and excited to be there!!!
We had a delicious night,
and got to sleep around 1 in the morning, and were back up by 8 in the morning for an excellent breakfast of bagels and juice!!!
We
all packedinto the cars and headed to the vert for our morning session which was also excellent, our speaker (Scott Hemberry) spoke
this weekend about how Christ has enabled all of us to becaome heroes!
We headed out for free time, got dressed at our hotel for paintballing,
and had a blast shooting each other, and people from other churches. Stephanie was a wild woman and was killing!!!! Down
in the trenches, Missy, Shayne, and Lindy got caught on some barbed wire, and that was a little dangerous, but they made it out alive!!!
The
night session was moving for a lot of our students, whether they came forward and made commitments to move on from the past and let
this be a new step and a permanent step in life, or they had their eyes opened and their hearts opened while sitting in their seats
just praising God and asking Him what they needed in their lives. It was a powerful night of worship and brokeness followed
by a delicious time of fellowship at Denny's.
The students had a crazy delicious time at Denny's and then we headed to the hotel
for another wonderful night of being up until 2 in the morning hanging out with the security guard ( Abbie Horton). But before the
girls would go to sleep that night, the best Forklift prank would be pulled!!! Then, it was up again at 8 for breakfast!!
The boys woke up Sunday morning to a door sovered in feminine product ads!!! It was sweet. We had an amazing time of worship and just seeing God for who He was on Sunday monrning while Jeannie was in Longview teaching our delicious Sunday school class!!!!
Sunday free time we just hung out, napped, played mow ( in which as a compliment to Phil, Dave said that her mom was hot), went shopping at Wal-mart and finally got Missy the right camera battery, and just had a glorious time being together!!! Sunday night we had some more worship, and then some time at Shari's eating deliciously prepared grub. The waiter never brought mine, so I was starving and after our pow-wow, I went back to Shari's and had some food, which the waiter brought to me this time, thankfully!!!!!
The girls stayed up far too late, and had far too much fun eating pie, and then we woke up, packed, and headed to the vert for our closing session. It was very bittersweet because the commitments of the weekend were so heavy and excellent, but we were headed home, away from all of the people that we just met, and away from the smurf yet again!!! we said our good bye's, and as I looked around the car, I almost cried because I was so pleased with what God did in every students hearts and lives that I was surrounded with.
We blasted the party music, and headed back to Longview to rejoin our junior highers all fired up and ready!!!!!!
