"Thanks for the memories, even if they weren't so great..."

Dear Bloggy-

I write you a sad note today - at least the beginning of it will be. I went camping with students this weekend and it didn't go so well. In fact, I brought them home early because of their behaviour. It hurts and pisses me off and saddens me and all sorts of things that I had to do this, but I didn't have many other options. Here's the low down - I spent last week running around trying to get everything together for this trip and the students were pretty excited about it and I was busting balls to get everything ready and right. It was going to be sweet - one night at my 'rents house, two days, one night camping (switched from camping and canoeing do to storm predictions), then party two nights with a youth group (for awhile at SpringHill South). Pretty awesome, right? Well, my kiddies got here, got in the van and were fine until Friday around 10:00 am when they started fighting. Not normal stuff, but fighting about EVERYTHING and being very rude and to each other and to the other adult and to myself. Then the rain started and we were stuck in a shelter house most of the evening - not the ideal, but I figure, hey, we can play some games, eat some food and just generally have a good time, right? How wrong was I - people often tell me I'm wrong when I make statements like "I'm the worst youth pastor ever"...and they're probably right, I don't assault students, but as far as being good at what I do, probably not true. Anyhow, my kids avoid me in a shelter house for a good couple of hours even when I try to get them to come over and do stuff (Jenga, would you rather, Ninja/Bono tag, big king monkey, etc.) with me and when I have to tell them to stop fighting. 'Round about 7:00 PM I told them they'd have to cut it out or we'd go back home, and they seemed to understand that this was a legitimate statement. Enter the next morning (after more fighting and arguing), we pack up and head back to the church. Yeah. No so sweet.

The personal aftermath for me leaves questions of whether or not this is a total indictment of my ability to be with students? If I've been here a year and I haven't been able to impact students thus far, what's the point? Is it really a wise choice in my spiritual journey to stay here much longer? Am I going to get fired? Have I lost whatever trust I had with parents, staff members and students? Should I leave? I've never heard of another youth pastor ever having to do something like this - so obviously of my circle of friends, there's something wrong with me, right? Listen Bloggy, I know you don't have the answers to this, and I don't expect you to, but there some of them are.

On other fronts, I went back to Ogilville this weekend and went to church there - that was good. I miss those people so very much. I hung out with some of the students I had there - in fact, I took them with me to Sprinhill because I wanted to still network with managers and whatnot there. It was a blast - I tried to bite my tongue off, but it was good...anyway...more on that later...I need to get to work.

Dr. J