A Night in the Woods

After an awesome week at the Barn, of 25 students (5 of which were new and 4 students who we hadn't seen in months), I was given an awesome chance to hang out with 3 of the boys who attend the Barn. These three were Kyle, Jordan and Caleb. Originally Travis was supposed to come too, but the night didn't quite go exactly as planned. There is a sickness running around here it would seem. All week Kyle and Jordan were sick, and that night Travis got sick and could not hang out. We were all planning on spending the night in the woods camping by my make shift campsite, but for the better of those sick and getting over sickness we just sat around the fire till 10 and that was that. (Actually I ended up sleeping outside all by myself).

Despite the change in plans it was really a fun night. We grabbed a bunch of stuff and headed back into the woods. We started off by making a fire, which happily didn't take too long, and then we chopped up a watermelon that I had, but only ended up throwing most of it around because it was rotten in the center. Once the fire was going really nice I set some good logs on top and then put our cast iron frying pan on top of that. Then we started cooking a chicken and rice meal. Which didn't taste half bad with the right seasoning, peppers and cheese (one always needs cheese).

After that came more food. (Warning: from here on out it was a typical guy night). We cut some sticks to cook hotdogs on, and then we needed some more stuff to go with the dozen eggs we had. So Kyle went off with the others while I watched the fire. When he got back he had more hotdogs, marshmellows, choclate, gram crackers, and bacon. Yum... So we cooked the pound of Bacon in the frying pan, then put it in a make shift bowl Jordan made from the Watermelon. Then we cracked a dozen eggs, 2 of which didn't make it into the pan, and scrambled up a dozen eggs, and divided it all amongst us.

Really it was a night of much eatting, but it was really fun to be able to hang out with these boys and to just live life on life with them. People would say that in order to grow today's youth in Christ you must be constantly speaking about Jesus, but I would disagree in the fact that sometimes you just need to live like Jesus among them. Yes, both words and actions are important, but Saturday night I had an awesome chance just to live with these guys, and that was truely awesome!

In Christ Jesus,
Jeremiah Dowling