A youth hike

On Saturday the youth from the church went on a hike in the mountains.  We began hiking up the mountain at 1:30pm and returned at 6:00pm.  We basically hiked up, enjoyed the view, and hiked back down the same path.  The scenery was breathtaking and unfortunately, the pictures just can't capture it all. 

 

Overall, the whole outing was very encouraging.  Many of the youth brought along friends, and we had a group of about 35 youth and 5 adults.  Besides being a good time of fellowship, the purpose of the hike is also to physically challenge the youth.  We hiked for about 2 hrs straight up... at an altitude of 10k-11k feet to boot.  Needless to say, we all were huffing and puffing at the end of the 2 hrs. when we got to a grassy peak.  Here we sang some praise choruses and Pastor Santiago shared a challenging message with the youth. 

 

The youth are all in different stages of maturity spiritually, but it's encouraging to see how many of them are growing.  There is an obvious hunger for things for things of the Lord.  There are few things I find more enjoyable than this sort of activity with the youth. Sometimes I'm encouraging them to keep going and make it to the top of the mountain, and other times we're teasing each other.  Over the last year-and-a-half, I've grown close to many of them.  We sure have a lot of fun together.