Disunity, and healing.

This week has been going up and down like a sine wave. There are a lot of things going on that some I am aware of, and some not. This past Saturday, we had what we called the Adventure Race. It took us 8 hours to finish. The rules of the game is to have a team of at least 6 people, with a minimum of 3 girls. And the project got separated, there was a lot of disunity, and people were forming teams together due to people’s athletic ability, verses for the good of the whole team. There were people that felt left out, but somehow, teams were formed, and the race began.

Saturday morning, we started at 8am, and we were not given the course until 7:30am. But the course began with swimming, in which I was in. We had to do 4 full lengths of the pool here, and it was the hardest part for me. It was a relay style, in which 4 of the 6 people had to compete, and each people had to swim forward, back, forward, back. I felt like I let the team down when I was using more oxygen than I was intaking (which is very common at this elevation), and I began to not able to move my legs on the 3rd length, and half way through the 4th length, I just couldn’t move. But people around me were still cheering me on. Our team was the last to finish the swimming portion, and I stayed in the locker room, for a while too. I was very discouraged at this point with how the race was going. And on top of that, I was dealing with some stuff emotionally too.

After the locker room, we started biking trails, in which we are suppose to bike to this waterfall. And on the way to the waterfall, I hit a curb and wiped out. Got myself a nice scar to show for it. Luckily the snowboarder in me knows how to fall, and I was told by a spectator(another person on the team) that I rolled. Fortunately it ended that way, I could have been a lot more injured. That morning, I drowned my body in ibuprofen, so I did not feel any pain at all. I got right back up two seconds later, and said “LETS GO!”.

When we got to the foot of the waterfall, our team were given a mental challenge. Then after we answered that, we climbed and got to the waterfall. There were part of the trail toward the waterfall in which were sketchy. But I was so driven to just keep going, I did not ponder too long when making decisions. It’s just GO! At the waterfall we were given another mental challenge.

After the waterfall, we climbed back down, to our bikes, then biked to another mountain, this time it was mountain biking, not so much road biking. After mountain biking to our next destination, we were given another mental challenge (memory verses all jumbled up), it was hard. It took our team 25 minutes to figure out (with a little aid from the staff when they were heading down). Then we began our hike up the mountain.

The mountain trail (berry picker trail), was around 4 miles, and there was a gain of elevation of roughly 2900 vertical ft. That trail took 2.5 hours, we were all so happy when we got to the top. On the way up, there were struggles. Our team were all over the spectrum in terms of physical shape. And it was pretty hard getting up that trail. My boy Adam’s leg cramped up, and could not move. I gave him some ibuprofen and had him rested and drink lots of water. It helps removes the lactic acid that builds up from all the physical activities.

After we got to the top, we got a mental challenge, in which we rocked it. And we had to hike back down. Going downhill was a lot easier. Gravity was working with us this time. Somehow the idea of taking the ski run down instead of the trail came up, and it became a lot riskier. I almost fell on my face twice on the way down. It would have been nasty, but the snowboarder in me kept me safe, knowing when to stop and when not to, and just kept going forward until I regain my balance. That was fun. It took us 2.5 hours to hike up the mountain, and only 1 hour to hike down.

That was pretty much it for that night, everyone went to bed early because we were all exhausted.

Sunday rolled around, and we had reflection night. The staff led us through a time of confession and just breaking down barriers that is separating the group. After the time of confession as a group, I can feel that healing is going on. Things that were built up for the past 4 weeks finally got released, and it was just amazing to see what we could have easily avoided by confronting the issue right away instead of waiting for it to build.