Green Circles, Blue Squares, and a Black Diamond

Written by Lindsay “Pokey” Neumann

It was probably the second funniest thing I have ever seen. Rachel Carlson was just minding her own business, skiing along through the woods, when out of nowhere comes Megan Gundale tearing down the hill. “Watch out Rachel” she yells, as she crashes into the back of her. They both topple over backwards and Rachel is now sitting on the front of Megan’s skis. The two of them continue down the hill, screaming, until a tree jumps out and stops them. Some might have stood there amazed that they didn’t get hurt. Me, I fell over laughing.

Saturday January 13, 2001 marked the beginning of our youth group’s second annual Ski Retreat. Twenty-six students and seven leaders left bright and early on Saturday morning and headed off to Mosinee, Wisconsin, the hometown of our very own Andrew Schurman. In two vans and three cars, the ride up was filled with tons of laughter, and singing. We arrived at Andy’s parents house around noon. And after we unloaded the vehicles, got settled in, and ate lunch, we were ready for whatever the weekend had in store for us.

We sure fit a lot into those two and a half days. We skied, laughed, sang songs, skied, mourned over the Vikings, played snow football, snow boarded, had a snowball fight, ate food, learned about Proverbs, skied, went in the hot tub, played pool, skied, were challenged to memorize scripture, spent time with friends, and we even fit some skiing in there. After all that’s what we came for.

Skiing (and snow boarding) took place at Granite peak in Wausau, WI. We skied pretty much all day on Saturday and took up about half the day on Sunday too. Everyone has some interesting and funny stories to tell. From following a couple of eight year old kids down a black diamond to getting off the chair lift with only one ski. Many of us experienced loosing our ski poles, having huge wipeouts, bombing the hills, having our snow pants fall down, and either being the “sprayer” or “sprayee” when you got to the bottom of the hill. While some of us were content to stay on the three green circles (the easier runs) others ventured onto some of the harder hills. Ask Breeaynna Rosa about her adventure on a black diamond called “Sundance”. You could ask Stephanie Kopishke or Carly Hildahl about it too, but their story wouldn’t be quite as interesting, since they decided to take their skies of and crawl down the hill.

I think Jon Swedberg summed it up well when he said “I didn’t go snowboarding, I went falling down the hill.” Pretty much everyone fell at least once that weekend, but God answered our prayers to keep us safe. Every time we fell we were able to get right back up. The only time someone wasn’t able to get up was when Tony Rosa had a huge wipe out on one of the hills, and hurt his back. He was towed to the bottom of the hill on a toboggan and was able to get up and walk inside. Praise God!

We had the privilege of having Pastor Rick as our speaker on the ski retreat. He taught us about the book of Proverbs. One night we were split up into four groups and were asked to look up verses in Proverbs and tell what they shared. We looked up verses about gossip, laziness, compassion, the tongue, and hypocrisy. For many of us these verses opened our eyes to seeing things God’s way, and how He wants us to be living. Pastor Rick challenged all of us to really dig into God’s word and memorize it. He taught us about what it means to fear the Lord, not to want to do anything that would displease God. Pastor Rick also encouraged us to read Proverbs, and not just once but over and over again, because after all, it was a book written for young people.

Sunday night, after we came back from skiing, we had some good old-fashioned hang out time. But even that was full of activity. After dinner and having Pastor Rick speak, we began a game of snow football. The game was filled with tackles, touchdowns, snowballs thrown at the opposing team, and some real intimidation on the part of some of the girls playing. The game ended in a tie, although everyone insists that it was their team that won. After the game we had a huge snowball fight. It began as every man for themselves but slowly turned into an all out boys vs. girls war. Everyone involved in the snowball fight will probably tell you that is was their favorite part of the weekend. The rest of the evening was spent playing games indoors and relaxing in the hot tub.

We got up Monday morning, January 15^th, packed, thanked the Schurmans for letting us stay at their house, and then headed home to Minnesota. The weekend was over, but still we all had a ton of fun. We went home that weekend full of some good food, great memories, snow in our boots, but most importantly we left with a greater understanding of what God wants for our lives. Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.”