Men's Retreat 2013

I was really looking forward to going this year because I’ve been missing all the guy friends I have at CBC.  If not for my audit at work being delayed another week, I might not have been able to go.

Javad and I rode up and back with Bryan.  When they picked me up at work, they were a little stunned at the security guard knowing me by name, and by me having a reserved parking spot with my name on it.

We picked accountability & skill partners for the weekend and from there were put into four teams.  I was sitting next to Robert T., so we decided to partner up, and we went on the green team.

The speaker was Michael Pouliot, a football player from Montana who started his own men’s ministry called BattleZone.  Kenton went through it and now it seems like the whole program is coming to Campus.  Michael was a good speaker, very intense, but also very intentional.  His big plug was on relational discipleship, and creating multiple generations of discipleship from the idea of 1 Timothy 2:2, Paul discipled Timothy, who disciple faithful men to disciple others.

A couple exercises focused on teaching us things to later teach our partner (who wasn’t in the room learning it firsthand with us).  First was a dollar-bill trick to automatically link two paper clips together.  Later it was more serious stuff: 1) a PRAYERS acronym for daily praying that follows the pattern of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6. 2) a “C-4” technique of emergency defense against temptations that get thrown at us.  The emphasis was heavy on learning each skill well enough to pass that knowledge on.

The food was amazing as always.  The only thing that disappointed was the cookies on Saturday night.  This year they weren’t on warmers (so they were hard instead of soft) and there was no milk.  Epic fail, but at least it helped me to stop after eating only three of them.

Friday night Spades tournament, I partnered with Josh B.  For round 1, we went up against Tim P. & Kyle L.  Tim went nil every hand, but only got it three times, and we still beat them.  Round 2, we lost by six points to Jon D. & Matt S.  I should have counted the points potential (I was last to bid on the last hand) and bid one more trick.

The weekend activity was “top shot.”  The four teams rotated through stations of 3D archery, throwing knives, tomahawks, and slingshot.  Lots of fun.  I wasn’t terrible, but I was not skilled at it.  During competition, though, I was only of only three guys on our team to break a bottle with the slingshot.  Daniel Y. was so thrilled that someone finally broke one for our team that he ran in and picked me up.  Marc (who is blind) and Chapman were the only other guys to break bottles (Chapman broke two).

A great weekend with encouraging conversations and fellowship.

Men's Retreat 2012 Day 3

Woke up, took a shower, packed up, and went down to breakfast.  No new snowfall  this morning on my car, but a decent layer of ice had frozen the towel to the windshield.  So I decided to walk rather than wait for the car to thaw out.

This breakfast was amazing.  Lots of great options at the main entrée bar, but an omelette station was set up as well.  I put back two heaping plates full.  I should have gone for a second omelette, too.

I sat with Adrian, one of the college-age guys, at breakfast.  While we were talking Nate C. came up and asked Adrian to pop his back, so I asked him to pop mine too.  I was lamenting having to go pay my chiropractor to unlock me again after I’d just seen him Thursday night.  I think it was a combination of the extensive driving and a softer bed than I’m used to.  I love that cracking sound.  Adrian probably got six or seven vertebrae on me.

Instead of group devotions, Sundays are individual devotions because some years, a lot of people leave Saturday night, so some groups can be significantly dwindled.  This one was on Psalm 73, where the author is in anguish over the perceived success of the wicked, but then comes around to remember God sovereignty, and that following Him is worth more than any earthly temporal success.

We started the morning session with worship, and then invited our weekend host Sarah up to talk about the developments with Hume.  They’ve opened up an east coast location to reach kids on that coast as well.  Overall, I think it’s a great idea, but too much expansion in a non-profit always concerns me.  I was excited to see the video on it and get some information that the first run of it had gone well.

Justin then wrapped up Job with God finally chiming in.  A convicting question this morning was What if God’s answer to my personal plea for relief in some circumstance would mess up the universe?  This message made me think of the movie Bruce Almighty.  While crass, it had some very insightful points.  When Bruce lassos the moon for his girlfriend, it creates a tidal wave overseas.

 

Another point Justin hit was how God doubled the replacement of everything lost, except for Job’s children.  Doubling the original lost children would have been crass in making them seem replaceable.  And at the same time, there was no restoration of lives lost.  God didn’t come back and say, “Just kidding!”  The lost was real and difficult.

We took communion as a group and spent some time in prayer before being dismissed.  We loaded up the car, ate lunch, and then took off the chains.  The roads within Hume were thawing out, so we decided to start sans chains and put them back on when needed.  We only hit two mild patches of ice, and I was going slow enough that we held our traction and arrived safely back at my house.

Another great retreat.

Men's Retreat 2012 Day 2

Melatonin has to be one of the most wonderful pills in the world, next to ibuprofen.  Now having my tonsils out, I sleep better camping and/or in the mountains, but I still tend to wake up a few times in the night, but it’s easier to fall back asleep now.  Now that I’ve figured out melatonin will work for me (it didn’t as a teenager), it just helps keep me asleep through most of the night.  Six glorious hours of sleep.

We woke up to a beautiful thick blanket of snow.  Absolutely breathtaking.  I was glad I remembered to put a towel over my windshield to make the car that much more ready to get started in the morning.  I love having a vehicle up here.  I know the exercise is good for me, but I just enjoy the freedom of being able to drive back and forth from all the location changes we make throughout the weekend.

Saturday morning we have small group devotions over breakfast.  I was a little disappointed in the breakfast though, which shocked me because I have never had unpleasant food or insufficient food options at men’s retreat.  The egg bake was vegetarian (apparently there was a meat one that went early), and the pancakes and monkey bread were both pretty dry.  But the bacon, the fruit and yogurt were all pretty decent.  It just surprised me to need to depend on the fruit and yogurt bar.

I don’t typically enjoy the small group devotions we have at retreat, but it feels somewhat heathenish to say so.  We’re matched in deliberately random groups for the weekend, and it’s nice to bring a variety of viewpoints to a Scripture passage, but it’s difficult when we haven’t had any significant bonding time to have a trust in sharing with the group.  Some guys I would know very well, but there are always a few new faces.

The morning message from Justin continued in Job and discussed the wager between God and Satan.  Job’s trial went through the fingers of a loving God.  It was not out of God’s control.  God didn’t and never doesn’t see something happen in our lives and say, “Oops, sorry, my bad, wasn’t watching on that one.”  We were challenged with the question Who/what do I worship in the midst of adversity?  After a rotten day at work, do I come home and read my Bible and spend time with God, or do I veg in front the TV to unwind?  Also Is there anything about which I pray, “God, please just don’t take ______?”  My home, my job, my car, my intellect, my health, my reputation, my friends?

After the morning session we went to the small group challenge.  In the past we’ve created BBQ sauce recipes, built birdhouses, geocached, etc.  This year it was a series of circuit obstacles.  Marc is blind, so they added the element that during each phase of the challenge, a different member of every other team had to be blindfolded.  The first challenge was a relay race across the room to spin around a baseball bat four times and tag the next teammate.  I decided to get my blindfolded turn over with.  I went second in the relay because the first person had to carry the bat across the room (not a good job for a blind person).  I couldn’t spot, so I was depending on someone else physically stopping me or yelling at me to stop when I had turned four times.  I was SO dizzy afterward.  Other challenges included eating a lemon, flying paper airplanes, lighting a fire and frying an egg on top of a coffee can, making a three-man pyramid to reach the highest point as possible inside the Ponderosa dining hall sans furniture (two guys climbed up the support beams however), chugging contents from a random grocery store jar (ours was nacho jalapenos—I was no help), hot dog eating contest (I gave up after three because Daniel Y. was already on eight, and I didn’t see the point in making myself sick), and Pictionary.  Our team wasn’t dead last, but somewhere in the bottom half of the twelve groups.

Lunch was a remedy from breakfast: hamburgers with bacon, mushrooms, and chili for topping options.

The snow had wiped out two of our optional afternoon activities of Suzuki four-wheeling and the Screamer, but we still had the giant swing option.  It didn’t start until a little later, so Dave A. and I sat and talked at lunch for quite awhile.  He’s in my Sunday School class, but I really hadn’t gotten to know him that well yet.  He and his wife Lisa have a 16yo son, and they came back to Campus because they weren’t feeling connected in their former church and they wanted a youth group for their son to get connected in.

I had some trepidations about this swing, but I knew that I had passed on a few activities over the years at Hume that I usually regret not doing.  So I went to check it out.  A cable connects two trees, probably 50 feet up.  Two cables descend from the original cable and merge into one, which is strapped to your harness.  You have to climb up five rungs on a ladder to get strapped in, and then they remove the ladder to suspend you in air.  Another cable is attached, and that feeds through two pulleys, up to the height of the first cable and then down to the other participants, who run out to ratchet you up.  There’s a rip cord on that last cable, and you have to pull it to release yourself into the swing.  Absolutely terrifying to start, but awesome by the second swing when centripetal force takes over.  My biggest fear is falling, not that I would actually be harmed, but the actually feeling of falling.  So I know I have to push myself, and I’m so glad I did.

The really nice part of this activity is that it was very quick and done.  I stayed to help ratchet up other guys, but it didn’t absorb the whole free time like other activities have in the past, like paintball.  I went back the cabin and talked with Sam and Chapman for awhile.  Chapman left to study, and Sam and I were reading, but then we each dozed off into some nice naps before dinner.

Dinner did not disappoint.  Seasoned broccoli, mashed potatoes & gravy, roast beef & carrots, and chicken.  Dessert was chocolate brownies with caramel baked in.  I sat with a few guys in our church’s Men in Action class, and we talked about their hypothetical elder assignments, their case studies of the “messy” situations that can come up in a church that the elders need to address.  Jeff’s was being the only elder who knows something significant about a potential future elder, and Lee W.’s was being the lone dissenter on an elder decision that went horribly wrong, and having church members come up to question him about it.

We started off the evening meeting with some video footage of the giant swing.  My screams were the star of the show at the evening session, along with a few of the other guys they taped.  We’ve also had this four-part YouTube video series they’ve been playing just for laughs: “Guy on a Buffalo.”  Tonight they showed part 3 and we were left with a cliffhanger.  Short ridiculous video segments.  The evening meeting was about when Job’s friends came on the scene, and was entitled “How to Be a Lame Friend.”  Justin touched on some what-not-to-do’s, particularly with someone grieving.

Pastor Mike came up afterward and asked us to get in groups of 2-3 and pray over some specific needs.  I grouped up with Daniel T. and his brother-in-law Vadim.  Two really great guys it was a pleasure to pray with.

Afterward most of us headed over to the Ponderosa Dining Hall for our evening snack.  Last night’s had been some coconut dessert bars, which I even tried just to make sure I still didn’t like coconut.  Very disappointing considering the variety of snacks they’ve usually had for our evening hang-out time.  There were eight pies awaiting us when we arrived.  All banana cream.  I like banana cream pie, but I was bummed not to have some other choices, especially for the guys who don’t like that type of pie.  They brought out a plate of chocolate chip cookies later, but they weren’t warm and fresh like in years past where they keep them under heat lamps all evening for us.  Yes, we’re spoiled up here.

Lee S. got a game of Spades going, and we all taught Kyle how to play.  Kyle was my partner, and I was grateful when Dave A. came over to watch and ended up coaching Kyle.  We played three games of four hands each.  Kyle and I lost pretty miserably on the first game, but came back strong in the second and third.  Other groups had other games going too, but we were the last ones standing.  I’ve never been the one to turn out the lights in the dining hall.

Men's Retreat 2012 Day 1

For the first time in nine years of attending men’s retreats with my Fresno church, I drove.  In the past I’ve always caught a ride with another friend.  Hume requires you to carry snow chains this time of year, and I don’t have them and didn’t want to buy them.  No one I’ve ridden with in all those years has ever needed to put them on, so when Garry asked me if I would drive, I agreed, conditional on the weather forecast showing I wouldn’t need chains.  And it didn’t, until Friday morning.  By then, it was too late for us to make other plans, so I sucked it up and purchased chains.  Chains are non-returnable, so I was almost hoping we’d have to use them to make the purchase worth it.

Actually, when I heard the forecast, I wanted to cancel.  In the last few years, I have come to like cold weather less and found the heat more bearable.  I can remember a few retreats (always the second weekend of November) where I’ve been absolutely miserable from the cold, but others that were warmer (t-shirt weather in the afternoons even) and had a wonderful time.  But I knew I needed to go.

Garry and Jeff “Chops” showed up at my house at 2 p.m.  I had originally said to meet at 3 p.m., but with snow in the forecast, I wanted to get up there well before dark when the temperatures would drop and the snowfall would increase.  The car was loaded by 2:20, and we went to pick up chains, gas and food.

The roads were clear up until the entrance to Kings Canyon/Sequoia National Park.  Snowfall had started a few miles earlier, but not enough to consider the chains.  At the gate, there is a longstanding question of whether it is required to pay to get into the park if you are just going to Hume, since that is a private camp exempt from the National Park.  Different people have different answers.  When Amy and I visited for the day last month, the guard still charged us, so we went ahead and purchased an annual pass since it was only a little more.  It put my conscience at ease just to have it and not debate in the car whether it’s required or not.

This guard did require us to put chains on as we entered the park, so we dutifully pulled over.  The story of this was a total God-thing, because after I put mine on (Garry and Chops didn’t know how, never having done it before), there was another group struggling with theirs, so we stepped in to offer help.  It turns out that one of the key hooks was only shaped to 90 degrees instead of looped to actually hold another chain link.  They were planning to attempt to trudge onward 30 miles with a chain set on only a single tire.  I don’t know exactly the potential consequences of this, but I knew this was a bad idea.  So I walked back over to the guard station to ask if he had blunt-nose pliers for us to attempt to bend a proper hook.  The guard didn’t, but the group at the front of the line for the Park did.  Well, they offered me needle-nose pliers, which I knew wouldn’t work, but took anyway because arguing with someone who can’t see the situation, regarding the necessary tools to complete a task often feels fruitless to me.  They would be pulling over to retrieve their pliers, at which point I planned to point out the need for something else.  They then pulled out a hammer and channel-lock pliers, and we deftly pounded out a hook.  We got the car on their way, and then found out the truck of guys with the tools had made a severe wrong turn.  They were heading to Hartland for their church’s men’s retreat, which means they should have taken a southward turn a long time ago.  God brought both of our cars there to help out this other group that could have otherwise been stranded or injured.

As those cars left, my former roommate Daniel and his friend Marc had pulled up and started fiddling with their chains.  They had never done this either, so I helped fasten theirs to get them on the road.  It was an odd feeling to be the most experienced person at an automotive/mechanical skill in a group of five of my guy friends.  It made me feel proud for having acquired the skill (6 years ago, no refresher since) and being able to re-perform it when needed.

After that, we finally took off, slowly, down the road.  We had to stop a couple times to retighten ours, but it was otherwise an uneventful ride in.  We arrived at 5:30 and went straight to dinner.  Check-in could wait, we were hungry.

I love Hume food for men’s retreats.  I always eat well here, it’s a week after the Fresno half marathon so I never feel guilty gorging myself, and as we say up here: calories don’t count over 4,000 feet.    The salmon and beef were both good, but dessert was even better.  Chocolate soup (not sauce, but a soup, Abby’s special creation up here), with cookies & cream ice cream, and a stick of biscotti.  WOWOWOW!

At our first session this evening, we broke into our small groups for icebreaker competitions.  I received the challenge of getting an Oreo from my forehead to my mouth sans hands.  I figured there was no chance of success, but I tried, and on the second attempt, took third place of twelve teams.

Justin Greene is our speaker this weekend.  He’s a pastor up in Salem, OR.  Our theme this weekend is “From wrecked, wasted and wallowing…to Worship.”  Justin is talking through parts of the book of Job.  Tonight’s session was on Job’s assurance of his relationship with God.  Not sinless, but that he kept “short accounts” with God, sacrificing regularly “just in case” he or one of his children sinned.

I think this will be a good weekend for me.  Something that God’s been putting on my mind even before this retreat: Even if things never improve from a bad situation, would I still worship Him if it NEVER gets better?

 

I do think I have a pretty easy life.  I may have some extreme work situations from time to time, but I really have comparatively little to complain about, and I probably complain much more than I have cause to do so.  But if I were going through trial after trial, with no relief, would God be enough for me?

After the session was our annual Spades tournament.  Mike “Moose” and I decided to be partners.  Bad decision.  Well, more bad cards than on the decision for our partnership.  We just had lousy, non-complementary hands and lost 18 to 200-something to Jeff and Adam.  But Mike and I called it a victory because it meant we were then free to go to bed.  And since I had awoken at 3 a.m. to give my friend Greg a ride to the airport this morning and not gotten back to sleep, I was ready for bed.

I’m rooming with Chapman and Sam.  There was some mix-up over the cabins we normally stay in.  Those accommodations have always been pretty nice.  Five sets of bunk beds to a cabin, linens provided, a heated cabin with its own bathroom of two showers and two stalls.  But instead we were routed to Black Oak and Hickory lodges, which are very much like hotel rooms.  One queen-size bed, one twin and one trundle with a full bathroom per room.  Pretty much the nicest places they have up here.

Day 1 of Men’s Retreat

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.