Disaster Averted

   Ah, the title caught your attention?  In a moment....

   The students have been here since Monday.  I've enjoyed getting to know many of them, especially the 5 guys in my smaller "Action Group" which will be like a Bible study group for the summer.  To speed up the "getting to know you" process, we had an activity we did all morning yesterday called "Soul to Soul", which is basically a time for each member of the Action Group to have 30 minutes to share about their life story and their history, heritage, heroes, hardships, and high points.  I was overwhelmed at times by the grace that is obviously evident in each of their lives - seeing how God has taken them from a place of treating Him as external or just non-existent in their lives to today when His word is dwelling richly in them, and their personal relationship and trust in Him is vibrant.  I was incredibly humbled by their perspective and faith, and their wisdom in seeing how God has purposed the events of their lives.  To hear how he has reached out and rescued some of them as recently as last summer or between the semesters is amazing.  It is a kind of sharing that is extremely difficult to replicate outside of the summer project environment, even though I would wish to in my own groups back home.

    Yesterday afternoon we had a fun afternoon planned for them after all the sharing, involving a series of team competitions.  The first competition was a team name and cheer competition.  One group, calling themselves the Lost Boys, did their cheer and ended it with pointing to seemingly the distant sky and saying something about, "look, it's Peter Pan!".  At this point everyone's heads turn in the courtyard to the opposite roof, and a guy in my Action Group comes running over the roof.  The problem is that he was not slowing down on the downward slope because of his momentum, and as we all watched in horror he luckily took his feet out from under him and proceeded to fall off the roof, a good 12 foot uncontrolled drop.  Luckily he was just dazed and had no serious injuries.  But it is a moment I'll never forget from the project just from the sheer "I can't believe this is happening" sense of the moment.  Afterwards the staff were all looking around at each other in disbelief, and finally Jon Foltz stands up and said, "Ok, no one else on the roof for the rest of the time."  They had previously been on the roof that day trying to dump water on unsuspecting people.  Anyway, crisis averted.