Raccoons, Cockroaches, and Jesus

 (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!