The Great Rescue

Yesterday was absolutely fantastic! Our project went on "The Great Rescue."

For about a week now, the staff here had been telling us about how we were going to go on an adventure after church on Sunday. They weren't telling us where we would be going or what we would be doing. All we got were directions to the place we were going.

When we got there, they had us all park and wait for our assignment in our family groups. One by one, each family group was led to a briefing. When my family group was about to go, they told us we had to wait because there was a "vicious" dog in the forest. For Cereal. After the dog problem was taken care of, the twelve of us were led up a trail into the forest for our briefing about what we would be doing.

We learned that there were four people we had to "rescue" somewhere in the forest. There were also physical representations of the Holy Spirit and Word of God hidden in the forest. We were told that finding those would help us out. Before we were able to start, the staff stopped us and told us we needed some supplies. Almost everyone was given a five gallon tank of water to carry around. Two people had there legs tied together like a three-legged race. One person was not able to speak. Another had their hands tied together. Zorina and I had to hold onto this huge stick, and couldnt let go. One girl did not have to carry anything...they called it mercy. We were told that we had to carry around these "burdens" throughout our whole "mission." Our family was discouraged at first because it made the tasks we had to do seem so much harder.

While we were walking away, one staff member, Joe, was telling us we did not have to carry the items around with us. We didnt believe him at first, so we continued to walk and ignore him. He followed us around and kept telling us there was a way to get rid of our burdens. It took our group awhile to figure it out, but we realized that we had to pray and cast our burdens onto Jesus, and He would take them for us. It was pretty incredible to realize how eager we all were to carry around our sin (represented by our "burdens"). None of us were really sure that we could just leave them on the ground after we had prayed, but we were able to. We thought for sure that we would have to do something in response, but we didn't have to. Once we turned them over to Joe, they weren't ours anymore. It was a real eye opening experience for our family about the way we feel like we need to carry our sin around and do something in response to it.

After that, Joe led us to the Holy Spirit by telling us Psalm 121. Sure enough, it was hidden on top of this huge mountain. The trail up there was pretty difficult, but we found what we were looking for. The box we found up there contained water bottles for everyone and had a paper talking about Jesus being the living water.

We worked our way back down the hill and ran into another staff member, Luke. Luke kept pointing us in this one direction, telling us that we couldn't "rescue" anyone without the Word of God. But Joe came back and told us that with the Holy Spirit, we had the Word of God in us already. They were contradicting each other, but we listened to Joe and were led to the first person we needed to rescue. Luke followed us and kept telling us that we could not talk to the person, but he eventually sat back and watched. The person we talked to did not believe in Jesus and was going through a lot at home. Our group listened to his problems and we eventually shared the Gospel with him. He told us that we had "rescued" him, and we were able to move on to the next person.

The whole time we were talking to him, Luke was in the background being incredibly distracting. He actually pushed over a dead tree and was sitting on this rock trying to get our attention. That's when we realized that the staff members were being either angels or demons. We decided Luke was someone we couldn't trust and made him leave in the name of Jesus...and he left!

We continued down the trail, and ran into two more staff members, Lindsey and Mia. We weren't really sure if we could trust them but we let the tag along in group for awhile. Mia was pretty talkative, while Lindsey was pretty much silent unless she was whispering directions to certain people in our group. While following the trail, we were led to a prayer tent.

All twelve of us crammed inside this little tent while Mia and Lindsey stayed outside. Our assignment was to confess things that were keeping us distant in our relationship with God. It was so amazing to be able to hear what everyone was struggling with and being able to open up about my relationship with God. We learned that a lot of us were struggling with similar things, and we prayed over them as a group. While this was happening, Mia kept telling us to hurry up and to stop praying...that we were running out of time. That's when we realized that Mia was a "demon" and we commanded that she leave also.

Our group began to get frustrated because we weren't sure what we were supposed to do after that. We ran into two more staff members, Barry and Christian, and they followed our group. Christian recommended that we pray and ask the Holy Spirit to guide us to where we need to be. We prayed, and when we were done there was a detailed map on the ground in front of us and Christian was gone and in front of us. We were still arguing about where to go, when we found an arrow made out of sticks pointing us in the right direction.

At this point, we still had Lindsey and Barry with us. Barry was being so encouraging to us, so we assumed he was one of the angels. Lindsey also seemed to be leading us in the right direction, so we were sure she was an angel. We began heading to where the Word of God was located on the map, but then Barry was telling us how we should look for clues and not the Word first. It hit us that Barry was not on our side. He seemed so encouraging and seemed to be helping us, but in the end he was leading us away from where we really needed to be heading. Once we banished him from our group, we easily found the Word of God. It was located on top of this HUGE hill. The view was absolutely amazing. It made me fall so in love with God! I was sitting on the rocks and just feeling the wind on my face...it was an intense moment between me and God :)!

We came across another person we needed to "rescue." We talked to him in a similar fashion as we did the other person, and eventually he told us that we had done our job. We worked our way back down the hill, and realized that our time was up and we needed to head to our debriefing.

The whole process was incredible! I learned a lot about myself and about my relationship with God. I never knew how eager I was to carry my sin around with me, and how it felt so wrong to me to just be able to let them go and turn my problems to Christ. We learned a lot about the Holy Spirit, the power of prayer, and even just angels and demons. I loved everything about the Great Rescue!

Sooo marvelous :)!!