Who have I become? Extrovert?

Wow, turns out, middle school kids are the awesome. coming to KBF as the youth pastor guy, i was actually really scared of middle school. i had friends in the high school, people that i hung out with and could relate to. not in middle school. i remember the first JAM (that's right: Jesus and Me!! i wanted to change it but almost had a mutiny...) i led: i was terrified! i prepared for like 8 hours, had a manuscript of my talk and everything. and i had no idea who all these kids were. now, if i was forced to choose between high school and middle school, i'd go for middle school in a heartbeat. i love 'em!!

I just got back from the JAM retreat. 2 nights, 3 days in gunma-ken, which had like 3 meters of snow. in spite of realizing yet again that i'm not that good of a planner person yet, and the fact that i thought i didn't like snow, and i got WAY too little sleep, it was pretty much the best time i've ever had. really. for a lot of reasons.

Leaving was hell. i had stuff in my car, stuff in the office, stuff i had to photocopy, stuff in the buildings. the bus pulled up and i was running all over the place. and it was snowing. i was the last person on the bus, after literally sprinting all over campus taking care of last minute details and things i had promised to do. nobody got sick on the way up (praise the Lord) AND i didn't have to put chains on the bus. i'm not sure which i'm more excited about. no, i'm more glad nobody spewed. that makes everyone feel gross.

So at night we'd put the kids in the rooms, threaten them with being smited by God if they talked (seriously), and had our leaders meeting, which pretty much consisted of us talking a little about how we thought the kids were doing, what we were gonna do the next day, and how we were doing. that first night i had to prepare a talk, since one of the gal leaders got sick and couldn't make it. so we're done with our meeting, and some people go to the ofuro (gender-specific, of course), other people go to bed, and some of us stay in the lounge. us in the lounge started talking, naturally, and i ended up talking with lara, one of my gal leaders, for like 3 and a half hours. and even though i ended up sleeping at like 4:30am after not really finishing my talk, and getting up after only 3 hours of sleep, it was totally worth it. i'm pretty tight with a lot of my guy leaders, since i have accountability groups with all but one of them, but i've never really gotten to know my gal leaders that well. and the 3.5 hours talking was really cool.

The next morning was my talk, and i did pretty well, i think. i talked about how according to the example of love given to us by Jesus, love requires sacrifice. and i gave them all a nail so they would remember. and i hung out with some of them on campus today, and they have the nails with them and they still remember what they stand for. amazing. i used cami as the example of the perfect man (i do that alot, actually. he's a good foil for me- i somehow feel that if i used myself as the good example the kids would have a hard time relating to me, so i always use myself as the bad example.) i told stories about my past love life, and contrasted it with cami and deidre, and how i somehow end up trying to get all i can from the relationship, and get freaked out when it no longer serves my purposes, unlike cami, who has gone through some serious emotional battering at the verbal hands of dre (does that even work?)(and i think you're awesome, dre. don't take this the wrong way.)

Then we went snowshoeing for EVER. i was thinking like 3 hours, get back, have a big snow-royale-rumble, have supper, move on with the day. a group of high school kids may have been able to complete what we did in the allotted time, but it would have been rough. we were up there forever. and snowshoes work a very strange muscle just below and to the inside of your hips, which feels weird when it's twitching.

Here's some pictures that might be fun to look at:

the snowshoeing adventure. 18 kids, 6 leaders, and a bus driver
Hikari in the snow
Erika Husby thinking
Hans the exercise instructor
Luke Ozaki snowshoeing
Mary, Hikari, and Tashia freezing
Lizzy
Jared the viking
Flyin' Ryan

While trekking along, a group of kids started straggling a bit, so i ended up back with them, joking with them and trying to get them to forget they couldn't feel their toes, etc. we ended up getting completely separated from the main group- mostly because we stopped to play so much. there ended up being 4 of the 6 leaders in the back group, and we only had 4 of the 18 kids. but man, did we have fun! we found a really steep hill with more fresh, deep snow than has any right to be undisturbed. so, we climbed to the top and jumped down. then we dove down. then we started catapulting eachother down. one of the leaders dove as far as he could and went about 12 feet before he landed. it was awesome!! one of my best memories.

I'll spare you the play-by-play of the rest of the retreat. i felt like i was pretty much always off taking care of something, or getting the props together for the skits, or picking worship songs, and rarely got a chance to just be, except for once in the bath, for like 30 minutes. and even then the gals were throwing snow over the wall. punks...

What was the craziest and most unbelievable thing that happened to me from this whole experience is the effect it had on me. i tell people that i'm an introvert, that i need my "me" time. and those of you who have been around me for a while know that it's true- sometimes i just need to not hang out tonight. the day after the retreat was my day off, and i anticipated desperately needing it. but tuesday rolled around, and sure i slept in, but i was really ready to go do the whole thing again. really. i wanted no recharge-alone time. i missed the kids. i missed doin stuff with them, of being the target for every kid within snowball range. i went in to my day off feeling recharged and refreshed already, ready to go out and conquer the world.

One of the reasons is, i think (and i'm not sure how healthy this is...) that i really never had a spare thought for myself that whole retreat. sometimes when i'm stupid, and especially with people i'm leading or with girls that i think i have a crush on, i replay my stupidity over and over again. and, since i'm not really the best leader, i get people giving me suggestions and confronting me, and i've developed a tendancy to internalize criticism, rather than hold it at arms length and try and learn from it. this means that in my quiet moments i'm thinking about me. up at the retreat, i did not have that luxury, and i loved it. every minute of all 3 days was for the kids- either the middle schoolers or the leadership team. even that one time that i had in the bath, i was praying for them, thinking about how to reach them, how they were doing, etc. i loved it. i think it has to do with discipline- how college students with part-time jobs get better grades than the slackers, and how athletes get better grades during their season, even though they are busier. i spent a lot of time feeling like i'm not really doing all that much, which is kinda hard. my daily life involves kids partially- either in one-hour meetings, or on campus after school for a bit, or whatever. the majority of my time is spent on me, though.

I think i'm sorta doing the same thing i did at multnomah- i don't think i'll be able to function if i'm doing too much, when the reality is, the more i do, the better i do it. man, being a youth pastor rocks.