It's beautiful here. I'm sitting in an outdoor amphitheater surrounded by pine trees and plants. Theirs bears around as well as deer and cougars but we haven't spotted those guys yet. This week has gone great so far! It's been tough to find time to blog as we are busy playing games with kids and preparing the service each night but we've been blessed through and through thus far. Let me update you since the last blog...
Arizona Camp :: Junior High
Unfortunately, many campers caught the swine flu and other illnesses as did some of our band members but we made it through and still managed to have a blast throughout the week.
AZ JR HIGH CAMP :: Week TWO from Garrett Richardson on Vimeo.
Water Games AZ JR HIGH :: allison
Chris sporting his new solar shields
it's called buck buck. think of a heard of cows holding on the other cattle in a straight line. other cows run and jump on top of the cows and try to stick a solid landing. if you land safe on top of the others, you've accomplished your task.
Tug 0' war!
One of my favorite campers! Rocking the bagged arm cast all week, even in water games!!
Beat down crew
Pom, ready to splash some dry children.
Radiance (minus Victoria due to quarantine)
Mic (best camp director EVER!)
Cale (aka seth rogen)
Radiance + AZ staff
We left Prescott, AZ on Friday afternoon and stayed in Barstow, CA for the night. Quite the experience...
Super sketchy rest stop in Barstow.
Bus Story :: Get Ready.
After a restful night in a hotel, we started driving early on Saturday morning and we grabbed some gas before we hit the Mojave desert. Interestingly enough, we encountered some bus problems. We left the gas station and as a few minutes passed when we smelt something awful coming from the engine. I pulled the bus over and we realized that we had filled up the bus, (I won't say who) with unleaded fuel instead of diesel by mistake. Turns out this mistake would reroute our schedule for the day. Therefore, we all started calling gas stations, local mechanics, and AAA but let me remind you that AAA does not service buses and that we are in the middle of the desert so there's literally nothing around but a few random communities. It turns out that a random neighborhood just happened to be on the other side of the offramp we were stalled at. Todd, Chris, and I realized that our best bet would be to start asking for help "the old fashioned way" by going door to door, since the iPhone was no longer a valuable resource in replacing our fuel tank as we were running out of options. I spotted a house that was having a yard sale and noticed that the couple on lawn chairs in the front yard looked nice so I went up to them and explained the situation. Even more ironic, they explained that just to the west of us was Edwards Air force base and how we had just approached a jet engine mechanic named George. We jumped in George's car, filled with gas cans as he drove us to another house in the neighborhood. Two more car mechanics pulled up behind us, Chuck and Jason, and made fun of us for a few minutes , then we headed to the bus for some serious work. After about three hours of siphoning gas, replacing fuel filters, and getting down n' dirty in the Mojave desert heat (103 degrees), Chuck and George helped us recover our bus back to one piece. He took us to his brother's house (the second house we went to before pimp my ride began) as Chuck's wife had bought two huge watermelons the day before, not really knowing why but they definitely were bought for a reason. As they shared incredible hospitality with us, they fed us, rehydrated us, cleaned us up, and shared about their 39 years of marriage together. They explained how God has been faithful to them in all of their years and how we really reminded them of their kids who have started families now but live far away. The Wilson family and George blessed us more than we could have ever blessed anyone else that day. Through this experience, I began to recognize how God uses our mistakes, failures, and weaknesses for incredible signs of his power at work in us regardless of our falts. We were able to share life with these people for only a few hours but it was in these moments that we saw Christ's love for us, even to the representatives of complete strangers. During a summer where we have prepared ourselves to serve the Kingdom, this day was one blessed us more than we could have known.
We arrived in Fresno later in the afternoon and had a swim sesh/dinner (that was amazing!) at Katie Bunker's house (singer in the band). The boys stayed in a hotel downtown that night while the girls stayed at the Bunker house. Todd wanted to cut his hair so he experimented with scissors firsthand, not the best plan but still called for a night of awesomeness. This was the result:
The beginning
The end :: thetail
We will be packing up tonight as we get an early start back to Arizona in the morning! Pray for our bus safety and all logistical smoothness, rest and good health on our break away from a camp this next week. We're in Coolidge, AZ and Albuquerque, NM this week and will keep you updated as always!
Thanks for reading! Hope you're doing well friends :)
love, Garrett & Radiance
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