What is a Missionary Anyways?

What is a Missionary?

Just had a fun little revelation. I've always stumbled over Camp Bighorns referring to their staff as "missionaries". When we think of missionaries, even a non-Christian would think of someone who preaches about Jesus and goes off to some far away country to do so. I think most of us could agree that this is the first thing that comes to our mind. 

But let's say we dissect that definition a little bit. We can break that down into two parts. First, a missionary tells people about the Good News of Jesus Christ, that he came for us and died to make up the difference between where we are and perfection or 100%. Now that's exactly what I and the other staff at camp are doing. It just happens to be that our audience is not an exotic people group on some remote island. Instead they're 'regular' people. They come from cities and towns and churches. Many of them already consider themselves "Christians". But how many of them realize the fullness of what Jesus came todo? How many of them, or us for that matter, can describe the beautiful, powerful loving nature of God? Especially when we're surrounded by "normal life" these things get forgotten or minimized. Through adventure, we can create metaphors for Gods love and his role in our lives. We can pose important questions and even start to understand what He's asking us to do in our lives. So, these are people getting to hear about the good news, mostly in a completely new context then they've ever experienced, as well as in a fullness they've never known.  

 Now onto our next obstacle. Missionaries are sent and go to exotic places like Papua New Guinea , Kenya and China. The reason they travel to these places is to go to the people who need to hear the good news. In places like Papua New Guinea, entire people groups even have not heard and experienced Gods love and direction fully. But couldn't we say that about our own society? We and the world have such a skewed view of God, Jesus and redemption that we lose most of it's meaty truth, if not all of us. If you went to a non-believer, say your next door neighbor or the person in the office next to you, what would they say about Jesus? "Oh he was a good guy who talked about good moral stuff". You may get lucky enough to hear "he did something nice for us". And so, we can establish that our own society needs to hear the good news just as much as someone in a far off land. It just happens to be that at Camp Bighorn, they travel to us. We teach Gods truth through adventure activities and our special campus community. And since you can't just go whitewater kayaking anywhere, we bring them to rural Montana, in the middle of the wilderness where God has already prepared so many places and experiences where His lessons can be taught. 

And so, yes, we do not travel to exotic lands and translate the bible into a new language. Or maybe that's exactly what we do? Except that our version of Papua New Guinea is the great rock climbing spot behind camp. Our version of translating a bible into Tagalog is translating Gods love and truth into terms that our generation and society can understand. 

God is doing great things through the missionaries at Camp Bighorn, and I am so proud that I get to be a part of it. 

Cheers!

Students Headed Back to Prairie

Students left this morning at 7:00am. Hard to see people go that you're never going to see again and yet developed such strong bonds with regardless. Excited for their journey and hopefully I'll get to hear a little bit about how God is using them down the road. Thankfully, not all of the students are gone forever, some of them (selected as interns) will be returning to serve as Summer Staff this next season. Looking forward to good hang out time, deep conversations and many adventures.
Thank you God for the people you put in our lives, because we know that even if we only get to be with them for a short time, many of them make a lasting difference on us and how we grow.

Practicums!

Just a few pictures from the "practicums" that happened a little while ago! Practicums are a great way for students to practice running their own camp - in this case it was with a young group of boy/girl scouts and a group from Wood Creek Academy, a troubled youth ranch neighboring Camp Bighorn.

Things are a'brewin'!

"God himself always seems to be doing his best here, working like a man in the glow of enthusiasm"

Sitting in on a meeting with the Explore students about the upcoming winter camp that they're planning! Very excited to be taking some pictures during this weekend!!

The Night the Snowmobile Crashed and the Stars were Beautiful

"The place seemed holy, where one might hope to see God."

"Precious night, precious day to abide in me forever. Thanks be to God for this immortal gift."

- John Muir

My "epic" snowmobile story is long overdue. What do these quotes have to do with getting stuck in the mountains you ask? I'll give you a hint, sometimes what seems like the most terrible thing turns into an amazing blessing.

Our Program Director, Reuben, and I were out on a scouting trip in the high mountains near Camp. We had followed a new road up the mountain and had cut through some pretty serious rough terrain with the snowmobile when the road emptied out into a wide saddle. The view was breathtaking.

"The view was breathtaking"

After a quick break we continued further into the area we wanted to explore. We were fighting our way down the road when suddenly, the road dropped away. The only way out was to keep pushing farther, trying to "sidehill" the slope with the snowmobile.

"Side-hilling"

As we continued, I could tell Reuben leaning on the snowmobile wasn't enough to lean it onto it's edge, so I swung my leg around to step on the side of the vehicle. As I did, I lost my balance and had to step off. At first, I chuckled thinking man that was silly. But as I saw Reuben continue to keep driving, I realized that he was so focused on not getting the sled (snowmobile) stuck that he didn't see me step off behind him. I shouted in futility as I watched Reuben drive off, farther and farther. 

And so, thus began the walk to him. I knew that Reuben would eventually realize I wasn't there, so all I had to do was close the distance between ourselves and then jump on the sled and we'd be off again. However, I started cursing myself for not having my snowshoes with me as I kept "post-holing" into tree well after tree well in the deep snow. After one particularly deep dive where I sank up to my chest, I noticed that I couldn't hear the sound of the snowmobile's engine anymore. Interesting.

A minute or two later I saw Reuben walking towards me. After quick apologies, a few chuckles and throwing on my newly delivered snow shoes, we started hiking in the direction of our ride out. As we walked, Reuben offered up "so... the sled sorta slipped down a hill. And ran into a tree." It turned out that as Reuben was driving the sled across another steep slope, he had to bail (jump off the sled in order to prevent it from tipping onto him). Unfortunately, the snowmobile didn't care that it no longer had a rider. As Reuben yelled to me to hit the "kill-switch", he realized that his passenger had disappeared and the snowmobile continued to run away down the slope, like an unruly child who just got free of his monkey-backpack-tether-leash and was now free to explore on his own. Despite Reuben's best efforts to pull the sled towards him, it continued to drive downhill, straight into a tree.

Reuben and I then spent two or three hours trying to get the snowmobile free. We used deadman anchors, vector angles, logs as levers and more to try and extricate our ride home- to no avail. Finally, with a "Huh.." Reuben discovered a tree wedged into the undercarriage of the snowmobile that effectively locked it in place. Once we removed that, it was only fifteen minutes before we had the sled turned around into a position that we could drive out from.

The moment of truth came. Reuben started the engine, I took my position pulling to the side of a ski and..... the sled sunk. It continued this until the track eventually hit frozen, slick dirt. We now realized we weren't getting out by ourselves. So, we hiked back to the saddle where we had cell phone reception, then called Camp and asked them to bring up another sled with some special gear, normally used for climbing. Two hours later, around 8pm, Garrett and Timo showed up. Two or three more hours and we had the sled free and thus began our nighttime descent of the mountain. The stars were out and, despite the need to lean into corners to prevent tipping and the occasional air from a bump, that ride was incredibly peaceful.

We rolled back into camp at about midnight and I sat for awhile in the lodge thinking about what a blessing God had turned the night into. Sometimes the things that seem terrible in the moment, are really just the opposite. If we take the time to step outside of our circumstance and realize this, I feel like we will get a much deeper appreciation of God's blessings.

Good Morning from the Mountains

"What we would here and now call our ‘happiness’ is not the end God chiefly has in view: but when we are such as He can love without impediment, we shall in fact be happy.

C. S. Lewis

Good morning all! I just wanted to give a quick update as to what's happening at Camp.

Yesterday morning the Explore 1 (first years) left on their team trip. This is their opportunity to plan and execute a trip without any serious involvement from their interns or staff. One group was planning to hike 14 hrs in one day so we'll see how that goes!

Meanwhile at Camp the snow is melting with our ridiculously warm weather - it's about 36 degrees right now! It's the first time in several weeks where you can go outside and the inside of your nose doesn't immediately start freezing. Right now I have several projects I'm working on.
I just finished an "announcement video" in collaboration with Timo and Corinne Towne and we're in pre-production for their full on support video.
Also, the Venture ministry of Camp Bighorn is hosting an adventure race in May and so I'm working with the team in a support role of who I like to call our Marketing Manager. Hopefully you'll see a promotional video out in the next couple weeks!
I'm also working with Mitch Long, a member of our Operations team to show people the incredible work he's doing keeping Camp up and running. I spent a good amount of time working on some thank you card designs for people who have contributed to staff at camp- so if you get one of them in the mail I hope you like them!

Also, I have some exciting news about my office space! I've been given a little bit of freedom to turn the downstairs basement of the office building into a studio for filming support videos and such. Originally, I just planned to have a large white wall to use as a backdrop and I've set up my desk as an editing station. However, I've since come to realize that there's much more potential for this room! What camp really needs is a place that people can come that is relatively quite and conducive to creativity, just like a coffee shop actually. And so, I'm partnering up with one of my good friends here to turn the basement into.... "The Studio" - a place where staff can come and work on things from advertising campaigns to support letters and hopefully be a place where we can shout about God's amazing work even more loudly. More on that to come!

Other than that, I hope you have an amazing day. Remember, God is good, He has a plan for your life and loves you dearly. 

Ο Θεός να ευλογεί

"Do you not know?

    Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
    and his understanding no one can fathom.
29 He gives strength to the weary
    and increases the power of the weak." Isaiah 40:28

Chapel Time

Blessed to get to have chapel time with the students this morning and it's so awesome to see young people standing up and taking a leadership role of their own volition to praise God. So proud of this group!