Another long-winded post about my youth

Last week Lori emailed me in response to a comment I left on her post about a brilliant new Christian marketing ploy she came up with on the way to a rodeo. (Yes! A real, honest-to-God RODEO, in TEXAS of all places! Bucking broncos and calf roping and Keith Urban and John Deere tractors and everything.)

Anyway, Lori and I had a lovely email exchange that lasted for about a week until I got lazy and probably forgot to write her back (sorry, Lori!) wherein we discovered that among the other numerous and bizarre things we have in common, we were both involved HARD CORE in our high school youth groups.

It can probably be argued that Lori took it farther than I did. She actually admitted in writing to some choreographed dance routines done in outfits that I can only describe as sounding atrocious, at best. I won’t go into too much detail because I think Lori has photographic evidence in her possession and I wouldn’t want in any way to underscore the post that she now is legally bound to write because I’ve said all of this.

Youth group for me was the best thing about high school. That’s where my closest friends were and that’s where I felt most comfortable. Right now we will not even get into the fact that youth group is where I met Dave, except to tell you that in high school he had a really terrible floppy haircut and constantly wore a pair of baggy shorts that looked a lot like this shower curtain.

I got to do things in youth group that I never in my life imagined I would get to do. This is mainly because our youth pastor was partial to exposing us to dangerous, possibly life-threatening situations with reckless abandon. I don’t think he necessarily risked our lives on PURPOSE, but I do know that he often asked us not to tell our parents what happened and then he would do it again. And we usually didn’t tell anyone, because we didn’t want that crazy adventurous portion of our lives to be suddenly suspended by our overly-concerned parents.

Our youth pastor had no qualms about baptizing people in rivers thick with piranhas or letting us spend several consecutive nights in a room crawling with scorpions. There was no disciplinary action if we purposely dumped people out of canoes into alligator-infested swamps and it was more funny than anything else when someone insisted they had head injury-related amnesia after being run over by a snow tube on a winter retreat. He has accidentally left youth groupers behind at concerts (ME!) and stranded them in foreign countries (we accidentally left a poor girl named Megan behind in a sketchy neighborhood in the Dominican Republic and found her being walked home by a homeless man about 30 minutes later). And would you be hard-pressed to believe that we LOVED EVERY SINGLE MINUTE OF IT? Well, almost every minute. I must say I personally did not enjoy the several panicky minutes that I spent in the Dominican Republic trying to decide which end of myself to put over a toilet, but I can’t exactly blame that on the leadership.

Probably the absolute Most Dangerous Thing that ever happened during my youth group era happened on a trip that Dave was on to the jungles of Bolivia, when some of the kids in his group were permitted to ride up a mountain road in lawn chairs that were strapped to the top of the cab of a truck with bungee cords. I don’t know exactly what the road looked like, but Bolivia is a rather mountainous country so I can only assume it was something like this. Dave survived, and actually there is an even scarier story about his trip to Bolivia that I am not at liberty to repeat except to tell you it involved his male friend Lynn and a twin bed that they were forced to share. Also I think an empanada is present.

On a trip to the Dominican Republic, the entire wheel fell off our van while we were traveling down the highway at about 40mph. FELL OFF. As in, there was a gigantic THUD and then the back left-hand side of the van dropped to the ground and sparks shot out the back and the van fishtailed and we all panicked and screamed and flailed around inside until the van finally came to rest beside—and I am so not making this up—an enormous TIRE FACTORY.

And on a trip to St. Louis to do flood relief work, said youth pastor ignored our warnings of a dangerous-looking impending thunderstorm—despite the fact that we were painting a warehouse

1. Standing on metal ladders

2. Using metal rollers

3. Next to a metal trailer

We were finally allowed to take cover inside the warehouse when big fat raindrops started falling, but only mere SECONDS before lightning struck the ground between the warehouse and the metal trailer.

But my favorite Dangerous Youth Group Memory took place in Juarez, Mexico, where we were staying for a week to build a house for a rather large Mexican family. Meaning there were a lot of them, not that they were in any way overweight. But you knew that. Anyways, we stayed in a little church compound that consisted of three buildings. The church building was across the road from our sleeping quarters and our kitchen/dining area, which were two separate buildings and which were about 25 yards apart. And that was enough room for us to romp and play before and after dinner, with a Frisbee or a football or because we were in a destitute area of Mexico, a rock. It never really occurred to any of us to question why, in this dirty, dusty Mexican town where it never rained a single drop during our stay, there was a gigantic mud puddle in the middle of our “yard.”

It never got bigger. It never got smaller. Our Frisbee fell into it on a regular basis, and almost every night someone splashed through it and got mud on their pants or their shoes. We just never thought about it.

When we got home from the trip, we had a debrief session about a week later where we could all get together and reminisce and talk about what we learned and what we experienced and it was all very weepy and touching because you know how hormonal teenagers are and things will just NEVER BE THE SAME after this trip and I LOVE YOU GUYS SO MUCH! and I MISS YOU ALREADY! blah blah blah. But that wasn’t the groundbreaking part of the meeting (as you suspected).

No. The groundbreaking part of the meeting was when my youth pastor stood up, chuckling, and announced that the mud puddle? The one you kids have been playing in all week? Ha ha ha! That’s no MUD PUDDLE! Didn’t you notice it never rained? Now don’t tell your parents this, but it was…

[DRUMROLL]

…it was an improperly installed septic tank that was LEAKING UPWARDS. Ha ha ha ha ha!

WE HAD BEEN PLAYING IN SEWAGE ALL WEEK. And he knew about it The. Entire. Time.

If I had to guess, I think I’d know exactly what end of yourself you’d like to put over the toilet right now. I can’t say that 10 years later I feel any differently. But I still love that man with all my heart. I’d do it all again, septic tank and all. I hope someday my kids are as lucky as I was to have the kind of youth group experience I did, although I probably don’t want to know about it if they do.

Comments

[lissa]

I too had a crazy youth group leader! Maybe they learn it in school, how to almost kill your students and not get caught 101. I fell threw a window at youth group playing some stupid game. But the best was when I was on a mission trip in Haiti and we were going to a island off the coast and the youth leader wanted us to JUMP from one boat to another (there were very choppy waters by the way), and did we have life vest for everyone HECK NO! Man those were some good times.

[lisa]

Every once in awhile my sister and I will be talking about something crazy and/or dangerous that happened in youth group and have to say to our parents, "We told you about that, right?" The answer is usually no...

[lori]

Because you knew that I was never going to send you those pictures! And now I have no choice but to post them. Well played, Emily. Well played.

[Nancy]

Wow, I just remember going to bible study as a wee eight-year-old lass and marveling at Mrs. McCanse's impressive collection of felt cut-outs, her preferred genre of story-telling. Seriously, there was not a parable that she could not illustrate with fancy cloth figures. Was it a sin to covet the little felt donkey for my own?

Anyway, your adventures sound like they were much more fun and dangerous and worthwhile than my drink a juice-box and decorate-your-bible-cover-with-glitter-and-paintpens gatherings. The Dominican Republic? Bolivia? Juarez? Sheesh.

[Carly]

I never thought I'd missed out until I read this story. Wow. That's all I can say. Although you did have me a little worried with the whole "he often asked us not to tell our parents" bit.