The one with the men's camping trip...

This last weekend, the guys of New Song and some friends went camping at the Sunset Camp Grounds at Union Valley Reservoir. About 40 guys gathered together this year for the annual event.














The weekend started for me on Friday afternoon/evening as we headed up Highway 50 to Icehouse. I rode up with Ben Brown and Kevin Cohen. The highlight of Friday night for me was playing hearts with Chris and Joshua Dunlap, Jonathan Small, and Doug Radford. We laughed and enjoyed the perfect weather. Clark Shu brought smores ingredients and we had fun cooking them around the fire. There is nothing as good as real smores cooked over a camp fire. The other highlight of Friday night was getting locked in the bathroom. The door handle was broken to the wooden building and like many others I shut the door and regretted it. I had my cell phone on me and was able to call for help. Another guy wasn't so lucky and had to spend about 45 minutes trapped in there until someone else came along.

Saturday morning a group of guys went hiking in search of an old WW2 bomber that had crashed in the hills. I stayed at the campsite and was able to spend some quality time sitting by the lake reading the Bible and writing in my journal. One of my favorite things is being able to sit by water to read the Bible and pray. I understand why Psalm 23 says, "He leads me beside still waters..."
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Saturday afternoon we set up a shooting range and had a great time knocking clay pigeons out of the sky. I was able to shoot several times and we all had fun knocking down targets and blowing up water bottles.

I headed back down the hill on Saturday night to prep for Sunday morning. I heard from several guys that Kingsley Chigbu did a great job presenting the devotional thought and that everyone had a great discussion around the camp fire. Most of the guys got up early enough to make it back in time for our 10:30 AM service. The weekend was a lot of fun and definitely a highlight for me!














Thank you to Dennis Wycoff and Matt Lavezzo who did a great job of organizing the trip and the food!

Also, mark your calendar's now, next year's men's camping trip is September 24-26, 2010.