Regeneration 2011, Day #5

My last day at Regeneration began with meeting a girl from Canada for breakfast, and then going with her to the prayer garden for our devotions.  I had enough time to actually explore the prayer garden that morning, and it is just incredible!  I chose a different spot for my devotions that morning, next to the fountain and the gazebo.

That morning's session was our last real session, and the speaker was Andrew Gutierrez.  His sermon was on how to take home with us what we learned at camp.  He based it off of 2 Peter 1:8-9, and it was excellent.

After lunch was our final team game, which was the relay race.  Next to X-Treme Steal the Bacon, this was definitely the hardest and most intense game at Regeneration.  There were thirteen different obstacles that included eating weird food, toilet paper throwing, a guys' only game where they had to pull a dead squid attached to a rope through their shirts, the smallest person on our team being wrapped in plastic wrap and being carried around the field as our human baton, finding $1.73 in coins using only your mouth in a kiddie pool filled with onions and limes, etc.  The last obstacle contains the story of this picture:

I posted this picture about a week ago with a promise to tell how it happened, and I'm finally going to tell the story!

Our final obstacle for the relay race was a girls' only challenge.  Running through the middle of the field where we had the relay race was trench full of mud.  All the girls on our team had to army crawl thirty or forty (I'm a terrible judge of distances) feet through this mud.  The last ten feet were crawled not just through mud, but mud mixed with ketchup, mustard, dog food, onions, and who knows what else.  It was disgusting.  To top all that off, the game crew told us that we had to dunk our faces in the mud somewhere along the way, or "the boys would pay".  I'm not sure how the boys would have paid, but we all obeyed and got our faces dirty.  I think I went a little too all-out with that one.  I dunked my entire face in the goopy, gross mud at the end, and as a result got mud inside of my eyes.  I put eye drops in that night and the next morning couldn't open one of my eyes because there was so much mud that had been brought to the surface and was sealing it shut.  It was painful!  Pretty fun, but definitely the most painful part of the week.  That's where I got the cuts on my arms.  Apparently I haven't yet mastered the army crawl--one isn't usually an expert on one's first try--and dragged myself on my arms instead of my hands.  My cuts are all healed up now, but they certainly weren't pretty at first, were they?

During free time that day we went zip lining!

After dinner that night we gathered for our final rally session.  It wasn't really a rally session, though; it was more like a regular session with music and preaching.  Sandman ended up in 6th place out of sixteen teams.  We expected to be in 15th place or somewhere around there, so 6th was pretty good!

After announcing who had won for that week, we were led in worship and then heard a final sermon by Austin Duncan that tied in very well to Andrew's sermon that morning.  After Austin's sermon we had our final mail call and lost and found time.  This was where those who had been sent mail had it called out and went up to get it, and the lost and found items were held up and whoever owned it came up to claim it.  Now, you see, my parents had come up to visit us at Regeneration a couple days earlier and apparently Chloe had forgotten her purse somewhere on the Glorieta grounds.  I didn't know this until that night, so you can imagine my shock and dismay when Austin Duncan holds up Chloe's purse--a very distinctive purse with a dachsund on it--and says someone found it.  At first I was in denial that it was hers, but then he started pulling out the items contained in the purse: Strawberry Shortcake, My Little Pony, etc., and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was hers.  So guess who had to go up and get it?  Yes, it was me.  It was all very embarrassing and hilarious, but I got through it in the end. :)

Directly after the final rally session most of the Regeneration people packed up, loaded up in their buses, and headed off for an eighteen-hour drive back to their homes.  Since we only had an hour to drive, we had decided to stay that extra night and then leave the next morning.  We got to stand by the road and wave as everybody drove away, and then went to get some ice cream before going to bed.

Team Sandman!

The squid game

Onion/lime game

Toilet paper toss

Gross food eating game

Army crawl

Getting ready for the zip line

Getting Chloe's purse. :)

Regeneration 2011, Day #4

On the morning of our fourth day at Regeneration I wasn't feeling very well, so I skipped breakfast, got some pop tarts from the vending machine, and slept for an extra hour and a half.  It was really nice, and I felt a lot better afterwards.  I didn't go to the prayer garden that day, but had a good time doing my devotions indoors.

Our first session for that day was with John MacArthur and the topic was the conscience.  I'm not sure why, but I didn't really like that sermon.  It seemed too focused on man, and not on God.  Maybe I wasn't listening well enough, though, because everyone else loved it. :)

After lunch we went to our team game time.  Our first game was sort of like ultimate frisbee.  We had to throw a football to our teammates, and the person who caught it couldn't take more than three steps before throwing it to someone else.  Each team had a goal, and the opposite team would try to knock down a ball that was placed on top of a pole in order to score a point.  Sandman won that game too. :) We failed miserably at our second game, however.  This game was called Kajavikankan (who knows why).  Each team would have eight girls from their team link up with eight girls from the opposite team.  Your teammates would be every other girl, with the opposite team interspersed between, and each person was connected to the two on their sides by holding a piece of rope.  The object was to work together with one's team and try to drag a person from the opposite team into a trash can.  If they touched it at all, they were out.  Sandman was crushed during this game, which wasn't all that fun, but it was still fun to watch.  Just not fun to play. :)

I slept a lot for our free time during that day because I was exhausted, and then headed to our night session.  This one was with John MacArthur too.  He based his sermon on 2 Timothy 2:1-8.  This was probably my favorite sermon of the week because it was so applicable to one's life.  MacArthur's message was basically that we as believers are to be teachers, soldiers, athletes, and farmers (figuratively speaking) and thus glorify God.  We teach, we fight, we run, and we sow all for God's glory.  This sermon was excellent!

After our night session we had another night game, X-Treme Steal the Bacon.  This game is the most well-known game at Regeneration because it is definitely the most intense.  It is the only time when all the teams are against each other all at once.  The teams all come together and make a circle around about seven kiddie pools filled with water and objects that are the "bacon".  A few people are chosen from each team (for instance, they would call out "All senior girls," and all the girls who were seniors from each team would play in that round) and everyone has about two or three minutes in which to get as many items as they can from their pools and across their team line.  The bigger the object, the more points you get.  Six kiddie pools were set in a circle, and in the center, on top of several hay bales to elevate it, was the seventh kiddle pool where the items with the biggest point value were kept.  This game was awesome!  Glorieta was actually able to get two fire trucks to come and douse us all with the fire hoses (very cold!).  Apparently there were many, many injuries as a result of this game last year, and so it was made safer by surrounding all the pools with a circle of hay bales that we had to leap over.  This definitely helped slow us down, but it could still be pretty dangerous.  It was fun though!  You can catch a glimpse of it here.  You can see a bunch of the games from seconds 35-1:15, but zero in on 1:00-1:15 to watch our night game!

And that was it for day four!

After playing the rope game.

Playing soccer in the rain.

X-Treme Steal the Bacon!!!!!!

That's what it looked like when everyone who had been chosen for that round went running as fast as they could into the center of the circle.  Pretty intense!

Very blurry, but you can kind of see how it was.

The fire hose getting us all wet!

Regeneration 2011, Day #3

 On our third day at Regeneration I went to the prayer garden again, back to my previous spot, and had some more wonderful fellowship with the Lord.

Instead of our morning session that day we had a couple choices for some breakout sessions that we could take.  Out of ten, we were able to choose two to go to.  Our choices were: "Studying Your Bible for Life" by Austin Duncan, "Their Lives Depend On It" by Andrew Gutierrez, "Facebook to Friendships" by Chris Hamilton, "Romeo and Juliet" by Rick Holland, "Directionally Challenged" by Jon Rourke, "Reasons We Believe" by Nathan Busenitz, "Christ and Culture" by Joe Keller, "Live Like You're Dying" by Abner Chow, "Listening for Life" by Ken Ramey, and "Fighting for Joy" by Adam Tyson.  Aren't those hard choices?!  I had such a difficult time in choosing, but I finally decided on "Live Like You're Dying" and "Their Lives Depend On It".

The first one I went to was "Live Like You're Dying" by Abner Chow.  It wasn't what I would have expected it to be, judging from the title, but it was still really good.  Abner basically took the entire Bible and comprised it into a love story, with Jesus being the Hero and the Groom, chasing after His Bride, the Church.  It was really an escatology class; again, not what I would have expected from the title, but I still really enjoyed it.

Second was "Their Lives Depend On It" by Andrew Gutierrez.  Andrew is the high school pastor for Grace Community Church, and I was really looking forward to hearing him speak.  I was not disappointed!  His class was on evangelization and gave us the whys and hows to telling people about Jesus.  The whys were: (1) it's a matter of obedience, (2) it's a matter of their suffering, and (3) God deserves their praise.  The hows were: (1) know what you're talking about, (2) be on fire, (3) live a transformed life, (4) be intentional, (5) start the conversation, (6) listen, (7) use tact, (8) leave with the gospel being clear, (9) stick to the gospel, (10) endure, and (11) understand that when they are saved your job is not done.  His passion for evangelization really inspired me!

After our breakout sessions we had lunch, and then had our team games.  That day we walked about half a mile to a field way far away and first played a sort of dodgeball game that was not fun at all and seemed completely pointless.  Afterwards, however, we got to play a mud game (!!!).  It was very complicated, but basically you tried to get as many of your team's objects into one of four trash cans per round.  Our team, Sandman, completely dominated that game!  The sad thing was that only sixteen guys or girls (this wasn't a co-ed game) per team could play at a time, so I didn't get to actually play the game, but we had a blast sliding in the mud afterwards!  I've always wanted to do a mud game, so this was like a dream come true. :)

That afternoon during free time I went canoeing with one of the girls from my youth group.  It was actually really fun, even though I usually don't like stuff like that that's over bodies of water.  The evening session was the first time we heard John MacArthur preach.  His sermon that evening was from John 15:1-11 and on how to determine whether you are bearing fruit, being pruned, or whatnot, and also how to bear more fruit.  It was very good.

That evening instead of having a night game we had a concert by Jimmy Needham!  I was way too exhausted to stay for it, but Rachel and Ellie did and said it was great.  And that's all for day three!

Paddleboating!

Canoeing!

This is what we all looked like after the mud game.  So much fun!

These were the balls for Sphere of Destruction.  I forgot to post this for day #2.

Jimmy Needham!

I also wanted to post this awesome song that I found yesterday.  I love it!