(Warning: Some details have been modified to keep this story
shorter)
This weekend held the most eventful camping trip I have yet
to take. Picture this.
You are stranded in the woods with 20 or so teens and adults
in your youth group family. You
here a high-pitched noise ring through the trees. You shine your flashlight on the woods in front of you and
start to scan the scene. To your
dismay, you see many pairs of eyes looking back at you.
This is almost exactly what happened on Sunday. We had arrived at the campsite around
the time that a group of scouts was leaving. They warned us of raccoons the size of dogs and cockroaches
as big as our finger. We just
assumed that they were trying to scare us, and even the ranger said that if you
don’t have food out in the open, you would be fine.
So we started setting up our tents and moved our backpacks
inside. Then we ate. As the sun was setting, we noticed a
raccoon walking along the path a ways away. Paying little attention to it, we started singing. “Light of the world forever … EEEEEE
EEEEE EEEEE” The raccoons were out.
It seemed as if they all were let from a cage because you would see them
everywhere. Right behind you,
gathered around your tent; they were all over! When we finally looked at them, we realized that they were
trying to break into the tent. Our
youth pastor went to go scare them away, and came back saying that the raccoons
had unzipped his tent, and had been walking around inside.
Instead of leaving, we decided to go to the store to buy
some ammonia to keep away the critters.
As one of the ladies reached into the tent for her purse, a raccoon
reached for the zipper only inches away from her foot. When we tried to scare it away, it
wouldn’t move! That was the final
straw. We decided to pack up and
go home. We had to take down a
chain, pull the cars through the woods, and shine the headlights at the tents
just to see our feet in the dark.
That was when we noticed the cockroaches. They would scurry over your feet if you
kept them still, so we stood on benches.
I have never seen a campsite go down that fast. A tent it took an hour and a half to
put up went down in under 20 minutes!
We quickly got out of there.
We ended up staying at our youth pastors house, or at least
the boys that wanted to stay at the camp staying inside. The girls slept outside in a collapsing
tent. I personally had fun, but I
can’t say the same for everyone else.
All in all though, whether it was fun or not, whether the
camping was successful, we did get a lot out of the trip. An eighth grader that has been coming to
youth group since sixth grade accepted Christ as his Savior. In that case, it doesn’t matter that we
had to battle raccoon and cockroach problems, or broken tent poles, because the
kingdom of Christ grew this weekend.
And I wouldn’t mind battling rain and snakes next time if it means that the
angels in heaven are rejoicing salvation.
This weekend just shows that sometimes, trials can bring triumph. So lets work to set the world on fire,
one wrecked camping trip at a time!
