Pathfinders

"In the end, it's not the years in your life that counts. It's the life in your years."

For one hour every wednesday, we met in a small room.  We learned about missionaries, worms, bible concordances, community outreach, snakes, pine cars, the books of the bible, plaster craft, soap carving, and much more.  

On the weekends, we camped.  Our last campout was a four day, three night trip with 3,000 other Pathfinders from all over Texas.  Here's what 3,000 campers look like:

Two of the teenage girls in our Pathfinder club rode in the car with Chris and I to and from the campout.  The highlight of the car ride consisted of a conversation that went as follows after one of the teenage girls made a comment about something obvious:

Teenage girl one: "biviously!"

Teenage girl two: "You always say biviously to me.  You don't even know what it means."

Teenage girl one: "I do too."

Me: "What does biviously mean?"

Teenage girl one: "It means...like...you know, when... I can google it...how do you spell biviously?"

Teenage girl two: "I think it starts with a b."

Teenage girl one: "No, I think it starts with an a. A-biviously."

Kim:  "Chris, these girls obviously do not know how to spell biviously."

With conversations like this, the car ride passed quickly.

After arriving at the campsite, we found our club camped out right next to the only shower facilities for 3,000 people.  At first, our kids were excited by the proximity to the showers.  When long, noisy lines of anxious campers formed the next morning at 3:45, the excitement was gone.  Tent walls are less than sound proof, which meant that we all woke up by 4:00 a.m. that morning.  Luckily, the rest of the weekend was so exhausting that few people had the energy necessary to stand in the shower line at 4:00 a.m.

The actual shower facilities were four truck trailers fitted with narrow shower stalls - 24 stalls to be exact.  Simple math reveals that 24 showers + 3,000 people = very short showers.  As I waited in line for my first shower, I was disturbed by the first rule on the list of rules outside each shower truck:  "Don't poop in the shower."  That rule existed only because someone pooped in the shower in the past.  I was so happy that I did not find anything brown when it was my turn to shower, but I did not like the empty bottle of poison ivy scrub on the shower shelf.  This was "biviously" left behind by some itchy, rash covered person who showered before me.  During that shower, I concentrated on not rubbing my bare skin on any of the shower walls.  

Our waking time during the campout was spent running between activities, preparing food, and convincing our kids that it was time to wake up/go to bed.  One night, I ate s'mores and played hide and seek in the dark.  One afternoon, we caught one of our boys in the girls tent.  Luckily, he was just helping the girls do their hair.  Seriously.  On Saturday, we emerged from our tents and three minute showers in dress pants and pressed shirts.  

By day four of our campout, I was exhausted.  I asked one of the kids if he was ready to go home. He was not, because he loves Pathfinders.  And despite my exhaustion after the campouts, weekly meetings, and everything in between, I love Pathfinders too because it means that these awesome kids comprised a large portion of the life in my year:

(Top: Taje, Matt, Anton, Brandon, Sayd; Bottom: Cameron, Tanya, Claudia, Rehanna)