Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Youth Conference Tales - Volume 1

The air was fridged, yet stale. I awoke suddenly to the harsh, dischordant beeping of an alarm clock signalling that 5:00am had arrived...a few hours earlier than it should've I thought. Dragging my weary carcass from the comfort of the hotel bed, I stumbled through the dark searching for the bathroom. WHAM!! My foot struck an incredibly hard object, sending shock waves of pain reverberating up my leg. The loud snort and heavy breathing that followed told me that the hard object was Preston's head. He didn't budge. I finally found the light and began my routine hygiene ritual. Even after my shower, my eyes were burning from lack of sleep, and the razor with which I shaved felt like I was scraping my face with the dismembered lid of a tin can. I exited the bathroom desperately trying to stop the bleeding I had induced from multiple lacerations in my flesh (who invented shaving anyway?) only to find all three of my roommates still sound asleep. Not wanting to awaken them too harshly lest they be startled and disoriented, I screamed at the top of my lungs, "HEY, TIME TO GET UP!!!" (not really, but that would have been cool). The four of us finished getting ready for the sessions that day, and I clumsily made my way downstairs in search of however many shots of espresso would fit into a medium paper cup. While offsetting my lack of sleep, the Quad Con Panna (thank you Brother Frank) gave me a burst of energy that could only otherwise be found in illegal substances. I was suddenly a changed man! I went charging back upstairs and burst through the door, cheerfully encouraging my young compadres to make haste with their preparations lest we miss the 6:30 shuttle.

The coffee did other strange things to me that week, but one of the most notable was our invention of "Freeway Preaching". Not to be confused with it's close and much older cousin, street preaching, freeway preaching is the art of screaming the Romans Road as fast as you can out the window of your bus as other cars drive by with their windows down. Our biggest audience was drivers of convertibles who often would speed up very quickly to avoid the conviction of the gospel. Once I had successfully influenced the Junior High boys sitting around me to join with me on this variation of Biblical Evangelism, we realized that a shortened message was necessary if our audience was to gain anything from our shouting, and began focusing on such verses as Romans 10:13 and Romans 6:23. We had many quizzical looks from passers-by, but sadly none of the hearers of our invitation for salvation pulled over and repented. I'm glad my wife wasn't with me because she has a bad habit of quenching the spirit when I begin such activities as "freeway preaching". She says she is quenching the caffeine, but I disagree. One good thing that came from all this was a few 13 year-olds who are going to go back to their home church with a new sense of boldness for which I'm sure their youth director will LOVE me. I hope none of those kids know my real name...

5 comments:

Sis. Julie said...

Amen!! What a blessing!!

David said...

If you check back, I'll have more youth conference stories!

Anonymous said...

I want to here this

David said...

Secret Spy,

Be careful what you wish for, because someday it will be you sleeping on the floor...

Anonymous said...

huh

Disclosure Policy