Here is a missions trip summary for all those who may be interested:
Our team (18 kids, 3 adults) visited the Brocks in Apple Valley, California, for 7 days. Our main goals were to encourage them in their church plant, and to help them out by passing out 10,000 flyers for their church.
Saturday: We all met at the airport at 5:00 a.m. We left for Denver at 6:30 and arrived at LAX at 8:00 "California Time." Took a two hour van ride to the Brocks house and to the campground where we would be staying. Now, when your looking out the window of the plane it looks all nice and sunny down on the ground. Then you arrive at the airport and wander outside onto the sidewalk. A nice gentle breeze is caressing your face, and your thinking that 115 degrees aint so bad. But little did we know what 115 degrees really feels like. About 7 minutes from our final destination we pulled into a gas station. I had to pee like a racehorse and wanted to get out of the cramped van. But when I stepped down from the vehicle a sudden wave of pure heat just hit me. I tried to make it to the station but the heat would just put you back. You had to lower your shoulder, plant your feet, and think of how nice that bathroom will hopefully be, just to get through the heat. We tried playing frisbee afterwards and our frisbee would just float higher up and away from us. But there was no breeze.
So, yes, the heat was pretty bad, but on around the 7th day you get used to it.
Sunday: We all got dressed for church then rode over to the high school where they meet. They meet in a new classroom with a courtyard out the back. We helped straighten up chairs and get bulletins ready. While we were talking to the people there we met this one kid name Joe. He was a black kid with a mexican dad and a cacausian cousin. It's really hard to describe this kid because he talked so much. He was dressed in what most people would consider "ghetto threads." Consisting of a Yankees hat, Afro, moustache, gold chain, dressy shirt (un-buttoned to show the t-shirt), jeans, and skate shoes. But, he came with a disclaimer. He said even though he dressed ghetto he was not a gangster, he just thinks the clothes are really comfortable. He's tried suits and he said he had to take them off because he couldn't move. Anyway, this kid was really neat to be around except he would never be quiet. Most of their church was seniors who would thank us for being there and tell us they were praying for us. Pastor Brian said during the message that when he had told them a group from Inter-City was coming that they got scared that a bunch of gangster were going to show up. They seemed relieved to see that were were somewhat normal. We had a mixed group sing in the morning service. They were a couple people in the back that cried through the whole thing. It turned out that one of those ladies accepted Jesus that night before the service. She was a mother of one of the members and was just moving down to the area. It was neat to see how the Lord worked so quickly. For the evening service the guys sang, our youth pastor preached ("I'm going to be brief tonight..." / "Pastor Brian never is!!"), and we had a get together afterwards where we all snacked on nachos.
In the afternoon the guys wanted to go exploring so we picked this mountain about a mile from camp. We spent the whole afternoon climbing it and getting back down. Unfortunately, when we got to the "top" we found our that there was much more. We had run out of time and ways and energy so we headed back down. We decided to leave the real peak to another day. This is a picture of a couple of us at the "top."
Monday-Thursday: The day that began passing out 10,000 flyers. The general idea was that there was about 10 in each van. Each person was paired up with someone. There were let out on a street and had to complete a route before retrieval came in the form of water, air conditioning, and a comfy bench seat. Most of the roads were very long and the houses were all spread out. Every house had a fence, every other house had a gate. Kind of made things difficult to move quickly. Also, every house has 2 or more dogs. It seems to be a law out there. If you are a resident you must be in the care of at least 2 dogs. That also made things difficult for us. The first two days were spent in the poorer neighborhoods (valley) , and the last day was spent in the neighborhoods with sidewalks and sloping driveways (mountain). The following is not a typical house, but it was a nicer house:
Tuesday night we got the bright idea to catch Black Widows. Yes, the poisonous spider. I HATE SPIDERS! But there were other guys watching and I coudln't show my fears. On that night we caught about five and stuck then in a large water bottle in hopes that they would fight. The littlest one was killed right away. By Thursday morning we had caught about 15-20 spiders. A few more had died. Unfortunately (or fortunately, however you want to look at it), they all ended up dying because we left them in the sun on accident. Here is a picture of the first 5 we caught. Sorry it's to fuzzy.
On Thursday afternoon we returned to the mountain with the goal of conquering its summit. We did. But not with a few problems along the way. A smaller group of guys went this time, and they were all interested in one thing: rattlesnakes. While we were scaling the mountain side my friend who was about 3 feet in front of me just froze. "S-s-s-n-n-naaake!!!" There was a two foot long rattler about 3 feet in front of him on a ledge about waist high. I ran over and somehow got some pictures before I was mugged by other guys trying to see and before it disappeared in the crack with a threatening rattle still being heard resounding of the rocks.
We continued up the mountain terrified of touching the ground. A small group of us had reached the summit finally when about 200 yards back we hear another yell of "SNNAAKKEE!!"
My friend and our new youth pastor had been lagging behind and just came upon another rattler. We quickly dismounted from the peak and ran as fast as we could over the rocks to meet them. The snake had gone under the rock, but we did not give up:
After a little while we began our descent. About 1/8 of the way down we came across another one. One of my friends had jumped over a rock and heard the rattling behind him. He turned and stared into the slitted eyes of a snake. Without regard for his own safety he quickly started beating the snake with a stick in his hand. After about 3 hits it retreated into the shadows underneath his own rock. We found out later from Pastor Brian that there were two types of snakes in that area of the desert. Sidewinders and Mojave Greens. The Mojave Greens are 16x more powerful than any type of rattler. And the ones we saw were not Sidewinders. We could have been bitten and injected with both a homo and neuro toxin. We would have to have been airlifted off the mountain and rushed to the one doctor in the area who treates snake bites.
It's getting late, I can't see the text anymore. I'm going to leave the rest for another day. Sorry this one was so long, hopefully you stuck with it to the end.
posted by eric at 9:21 PM
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