I’m surprisingly not stressed about the audit and am just
enjoying myself up here. I rode up with
Shavarsh, Garry, and Sam (a guy I didn’t really know). I left work at 1 p.m., and am still so
grateful to not have to meet chargeable hours goals anymore.
We checked in and went straight to dinner. Hume food is always amazing. I always overeat here, but oh well. It’s one weekend to completely splurge.
As an icebreaker, we broke into our small groups for
“minute-to-win-it”-type challenges, where one guy from each of the eight groups
goes up for each challenge. I thought I
might have it for most sit-ups in 30 seconds, but I only did 20, and another
guy did 31. Unfortunately I had on a
newer pair of jeans, and I’m a little bruised from the belt loop. I have Trevor B., Sam M., Bryan W., and Matt
S. in my group.
Our theme this weekend is No More Excuses, building off the
movie Courageous. Josh, a guy in our church is a Chowchilla
police officer, and works with Code+3 ministries, a ministry based out of our
church for supporting law enforcement.
He’ll be talking off the acronym REAL this weekend. Tonight R stood for “Reject Passivity,” and
he talked about Simon Peter. Josh
commended Simon Peter for wanting Jesus so much that he’d believe Christ could
make him walk on water in the midst of the storm that he’d get out of a boat 4
miles out to sea. Who cares that he got
distracted from Christ (which we all do)?
He got out of the boat!
Josh also touched on the church at Laodicea being lukewarm
in Revelation 3:14-22. But he took it a
step further to Revelation 4 being our promise of what’s to come if we get
white hot for God and reject passivity.
A couple questions so far have been very convicting for
me. What will it take for me to become
white hot toward God? What’s keeping me
passive toward Christ? Work, family,
sin, money, status, etc. This is where
it really hit me. Josh and his wife lost
their first baby Elijah eight years ago.
Our whole church was praying for this baby born with a hole in his
heart. When their second son Lincoln had
the same defect, he had surgery in the womb and a full heart transplant a few
months after birth. Josh knows pain like
few others. And for him to say, “Lord,
take my family if that’s what it takes to draw me to you.” Wow.
But this is God, so if we really know how awesome He is, even our family
can’t compare.
After the talk, we went back to Ponderosa for snacks (Hume’s
amazing cookies, along with milk). I
think I had six, which isn’t good considering I ate 3 doughnuts that the
auditors brought this morning. But
they’re so good!
They moved the Spades tournament to tonight since so many
guys are going home after tomorrow’s talk.
I like the change because the weekend always feels overscheduled to
me. This way we get that done tonight
when I want to hang out and talk with guys anyway, and it’s one less thing on
tomorrow’s agenda. I partnered up with
Mike B. and he gave us the team name “Zero to Heroes,” because he and his
brother got exactly zero points in the tournament two years ago. We played against Trevor and a new guy Alan,
and lost 245 to 2. Not much of a climb
from 0. I wasn’t disappointed with
losing or getting eliminated in the first round, but that our game went fast
and was over. Mike proposed a
consolation (or “consolidation” as he called it) round, and that ended up being
a lot of fun. Russ went Blind Nil in the
third hand, not knowing he had the three non-Spade aces. Then Tim, this being his first night playing
Spades, led out with the three of clubs.
I played the two, Russ played the five, and Mike came in with the
four. It was pure chaos from there. Russ had so many points that we ended up
getting set. But that was a redeeming
game in my mind just for the fun of playing rather than us winning.
There are a lot less guys this year, probably only 45, where
we’ve been 100+ in some previous years.
We’re only using one cabin this year.
I’m bunking with Jon D., Jeff J., Daniel Y., and Matt S.
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