A Day Off

Yay for days off!  Yup, it’s Monday, the official Sabbath of Youth Encounter.  We’re all in one host home in Prairie Du Chien, WI (translation: Prairie Dog).  Basically, it’s a mansion.  Josh and I have the whole basement to ourselves, and the basement is a house in itself, complete with a kitchen, bathroom, and ping pong table.  The couple hosting us has a huge house that sits at the base of a bluff near the Mississippi River.  It’s a small town, with a Wal-Mart and a Cabelas, so it’s growing.

We traveled from Black River Falls yesterday afternoon.  In Black River Falls we did a Saturday night church service, and a lock-in with the middle school youth group.  The lock-in was fun; I forgot what a diverse level of maturity a group of middle school kids can have.  We got to play a bunch of games with them, and eat pizza (our first official pizza), and we did a little Bible study with them.  Then we did two Sunday services, jumped in our van, and went south to our present location.  Sunday night we did a program at a medium-security prison.  Some of us were a little nervous at first, but the men that came were very receptive to it and seemed to appreciate everything we did.  It was really funny at the end of the program, Tara was giving a little spiel to wrap up the night.  She announced that we would do our last song, and then she said “After the song you will be free to go.”  Then she remembered that we were at a prison, and nobody was “free to go”, and everyone started laughing and cheering.  She felt dumb about it, but I thought it was genius comedy.  I wish I would have thought of that. 

Our day off today was nice, and still is.  Our host home has wireless internet, and enough space to have time to ourselves.  The host mom is an excellent cook, so the food it great.  She made homemade hot fudge; home away from home.  There’s also a local grocery store that sells a really rich caramel dip.  I tried some; you can almost taste each granule of sugar on your tongue!  Wisconsin is pretty nice, except I haven’t had decent cell phone reception since the day we started.  I suppose it won’t get too much better when we go to the Upper Peninsula, but I’ll be so excited about being in Michigan, finally a new state, and lingo I understand!

Tomorrow we drive to Evansville Wisconsin, which is just south of Madison.  We have a program there on Wednesday night for a confirmation class, and on Thursday we go like six hours north to the church we get to go camping with in the Porcupine Mountains.  We’ve been slowly stocking up on the warm clothes for that one!  After the camping trip, we’ll officially be touring Michigan, go Buckeyes!

Life is good, God is great!

-Kyle

This Place is Cheesy

We traveled from Wisconsin Rapids to Siren today, about a five hour drive.  In Wisconsin Rapids we did a morning Chapel service at a Lutheran School for what was supposed to be 45 minutes, but we turned it into an hour, so the kids were excited to miss class for a bit.  The seemed to really enjoy being absolutely goofy and crazy, which is great for Youth Encounter teams.  Soon after that we did a fifteen minute thing with the preschool at the hosting church, we sang the Hippo Song and did a puppet show, which the kids laughed at the entire time, even though it wasn’t always funny.  It was a ton of fun, especially since these kids all had a five second attention span.  That night we had a worship service where we just led songs and I gave a little message, I told a story about how I got lost in a cornfield playing hide-and-seek, and how I relate it to the prodigal son story.  Then, after the service, we had a two-hour hang out/bible study with the youth group, which was fun.  I led a game, yay.

My host family was great, they were all soccer players, and the mom made awesome pancakes for breakfast, and fresh applesauce, which made me think of home, in a good way, which is always kinda nice.  We left Wisconsin Rapids this morning, got to Siren, Wisconsin this afternoon, and had a potluck and program this evening.  There were about 30 people there, so it was a nice, small church.  The potluck was amazing, and the program went really well.  There was a two-year-old girl there that was just running all around us and dancing during the program.  There were a few times that she would run up to Josh and just want him to hold her while he sang, so  it was like having a sixth member most of the service.  She was absolutely hilarious. Then, our contact person gave us gift baskets with soap and deodorant and candy!  Despite the small group, and slight unprepared feeling we always have, it went really well and we got to chat with a variety of amazing people, young and old.

Friday is our day off.  Josh and I are in the same home for the day, so we’ll be doing laundry and sleeping in; two things that make us all happy afterwards.  This weekend we go to a prison for a worship service.  We’re all really excited for that.  We also get to go tent camping in the Porcupine Mountains of the Upper Peninsula next weekend with a youth group.  It’ll be fun, but really cold at night. 

The food’s been good, the hospitality has been first-class, the stress has been worth it, mostly.

Life is good, God is great!

-Kyle

Commissioned

I woke up this morning in the usual way, rolling over and sighing because I had to get out of bed.  Then I realized that I had just been commissioned the previous night by Doctor, Reverend, President, and Poet Larry Johnson.  That meant that today (Saturday, September 16th, 2006) was the first day of being in a full-time ministry position.  I also realized that it was the first official day back in the real world.  I guess a lot has happened since we’ve been gone in northern Minnesota for three weeks and another week at a camp in Wisconsin.  I think last night was the first time I saw a television on since being at the airport in Detroit a month ago.  It’s weird to turn on the news and see continuing coverage of something you didn’t know happened. Not knowing about progress of the wars in various places is interesting, because war is always a fast-paced news story that you can’t just dive into at random moments and expect to understand it.  Apparently the Pope made some controversial comments recently (go figure, the Pope, a major leader in the Christian faith, being controversial in a secular world).  The other huge thing I was surprised by was that the Crocodile Hunter died.  All due respect however, when you make your living keeping dangerous pets, some things become less surprising.  So begins the year of being out of the loop, yet still so involved that there’s no time to be tired.  Of course, there are so many interesting people to meet and greet that sleep isn’t a priority.

So we began this morning by climbing in a huge van with a trailer filled with tons of stuff, pulling out onto the open road, and driving for three hours to our first destination, Onalaska, Wisconsin.  We just finished our first “program” which was just a worship service where we led the music.  We also have two church services to do tomorrow morning at the same church, and then we have a program Sunday night in a town fifteen minutes away.  It certainly doesn’t feel like we’re going all over the world yet, but with time I’m sure that we’ll have more than our share of riding in a van.

God is definitely teaching me many things, mostly about myself, but also how to deal with and relate to all sorts of people.  It’s fun, ambiguous, and exhausting, but mostly exciting.  So begins the year (which will more than likely turn into a lifetime) of ministry, and, hopefully, tons of God’s grace.  I need it.

Life is good, God is great!

-Kyle Scobie

Mmmmm... Cake!

Today is my birthday!  Still the youngest person on my team (I guess you can’t pass anybody).

Life is good, God is great!

-Kyle

Solitude, Stress, and Sessions

So I guess it’s been a week since I’ve written anything.  That either means life is busy, or that I’m a procrastinator, probably both.  In any case, life is still very exciting, and this could be a long posting.  Earlier this week we had the infamous “Solitude” which is pretty much a 21.75 hour period of silence with no human interaction, no music, no cell phones (no reception to begin with), no computers, nothing at all.  It started at seven p.m. Sunday night and went into Monday afternoon.  I tried to sleep out in the woods, but I failed to realize prior to setting up my little camp that strange noises sound even more strange at night, especially in the middle of the woods.  Not to mention the fact that a hunting season open recently in Minnesota, and certain gunshot noises make being in the woods an uneasy experience (it turned out to be fireworks, which, while pretty, kept me from feeling safe). Needless to say, I packed up my camp and went back to camp.  I still slept outside, just not in the woods.  Another thing about sleeping outside in northern Minnesota is that, while the day can be very warm and nice, once the sun goes down, it gets cold.  So at five a.m. when I awoke kinda chilly, I wasn’t going back to bed.  So I got up, ate breakfast, watched the sunrise, watched the fog roll over the lake, and went for a two hour kayak ride on the lake (see pictures, hopefully soon).  I also went for a hike in the woods (yes, the very woods I left the previous night for reasons relating to the nervous system).  Monday afternoon I spent in a canoe.  I definitely took a nap in the canoe in the middle of the lake and got some sun on my face, but it was a good rest.  Overall, the solitude time was well worth the rejuvenation, but it was weird to ignore people all day.  Sometimes you don’t realize the personal importance of things until they’re not there.  You also realize what things you don’t miss when you get them back, like sessions where people talk for an hour or two about paperwork that needs to be done while on the road.

Yesterday we voted on and received our team jobs.  Each team has about twelve positions or so that need to be filled like team leader, treasurer, ministries liaison, program coordinator, etc.  Most of the jobs just mean you are in charge of seeing things in those areas get completed through delegation of certain tasks or facilitating discussion about things, which is good because when you have less people on your team, each person gets more jobs.  I have three jobs on team apart from the ministry aspect of things.  Least stressful would have to be Technology Manager.  Basically with that I am in charge of the team laptop and projector.  That means that I pretty much have it in my sight at all times or else I die (no stress).  Next on the list is Vehicle Manager.  I keep track of gas, mileage, maintenance, and all things van and trailer related.  I have a monthly report I have to fill out, which determines whether I get my monthly stipend.  My biggest job on team in the Program and Culture Coordinator.  Pretty much whenever you see a program or something, I make sure we have something to do for it.  I facilitate the discussion on what songs, skits, and puppet shows we do, as well as rehearsal schedules.  On the culture end of things, I lead the way in preparing our team for overseas travel.  I have to make sure we set aside time in the schedule for learning things about Papua New Guinea, especially language stuff, but also cultural and religious traditions.  This is probably my most stressful job, so I am looking forward to delegating some of the tasks and the stress as well.

Today, like ever other day, we ate a lot (it seems like we’re always eating, which isn’t bad because the food is almost as good as my mom’s).  We also had a bunch of two-hour sessions about our jobs, where we learned all about the stress we would learn to deal with as we realized the full description of each job.  Then we shared with our teammates the amount extra stuff each job implied (who knew sending five or more twentysomethings out on the road for a year would have to be so organized).  It’s all good though, we’re all fairly excited about it.  I also meant to officially say that our member, Josh Tomac, arrived Sunday evening, and we are all glad of his arrival, especially me because now I have a male teammate!  He’s a Youth Encounter alum, so his experience should better our team greatly.

We’ve been preparing for Rally Day, where we have our first real booking.  This Sunday, the 10^th, we’ll do some special music at a nearby church and a puppet show, we’ll also stay in host homes the night before, so pray that we’re ready.  Stress and excitement sometimes just have to go hand in hand.

Life is good, God is great!

-Kyle