This past weekend we had our student ministry’s winter camp. We headed up to our local mountains in order to get away, spend some time building community and growing closer to God.
At least that was the plan.
While it wasn’t nearly as severe as the blizzard that pounded the East Coast, there was a storm that made its way through Southern California on Friday. The storm brought snow, fog and other severe weather conditions. I left for camp early to set up and beat the worst of the storm. As the weather worsened, though, everyone else had a much more difficult time getting to camp.
One church’s bus got stuck two minutes from camp and its students were shuttled to the camp by the California Highway Patrol.
Two other churches got stuck behind that bus and had to wait until the bus was towed away.
Our church’s bus was told that it had to turn around because it wasn’t safe to go up the mountain.
So while I was at camp with three other churches, my group was forced to drive back to our church. Our group had a slumber party at church and eventually made it up to camp on Saturday morning.
I’ve been doing youth ministry for a long time and this is by far the craziest experience I’ve ever had. It was really weird to be at camp without any students and I was very excited when they finally joined me. I was even more excited, though, to see that our students had made the best of the situation and kept amazing attitudes.
I don’t think Satan brought a storm and caused a bus to get stuck. I do think that he wanted to use those as distractions to derail the work God wanted to do in the lives of our students. Our students rose to the challenge, though, and didn’t let the craziness of the weekend distract them from God’s work.
We had a great weekend at winter camp and it was a perfect example of how God can work even in the most difficult of circumstances.
I should have known things would work out, though, since the camp looked like Narnia.
How have you seen God work in the middle of difficult circumstances?
So glad you are all back safe and sound!
I like that you said that Satan didn’t bring the storm, but wanted to cause distractions for the students. God used the hard situation to raise the students’ faith and perspective to a new level. I also applaud your leaders who did a fantastic job with the students down the hill. I believe they were key in keeping the students’ focus on the right thing.