2018 Nantahala River Recap
Stay tuned to the end to see our youth’s acoustic skills come alive. They are so awesome!
Last year, we took our HS boys on an exploratory 6-day trip to the Nantahala River. We had an incredible time, so this year we took both our high school boys and high school girls (15 total). It was awesome! Between the six hour drive there and back, we had 4 days of bonding, which included:
Rafting some rad white water (class III). It was really fun to introduce so many of our youth to the more intense rapids. We've been taking them on the James River for years and there are a couple of great rapids but there is a lot of calm spots in between. The Nantahala is very different, its pretty constant paddling and rapids. We had a couple of youth and one guide pop out and got stuck a couple of times, and they all did great!
Sweet time in The Word. Each morning we had breakfast and read Psalms. In the evenings, we shared bible stories and discussed Jesus as the living water. It was a very sweet time together. One of the things James, our Director, focused on was having the youth recap the previous lesson before the next teaching. It was really encouraging to hear our youth explain, in their own words, what they had been taught the night before.
Free time and escaping the heat. Our camp site was right around the corner from a lake, so each evening we would go play in the lake to cool down. We also played lots of games: spicy uno, death hack, and ultimate Frisbee to name a few.
So much food. We were sooo blessed to be the beneficiaries of Impact Church's VBS this summer. They provided us with so much incredible food for this trip! Just to give you an idea, in four days we consumed over 24lbs of meat, 13lbs of pasta, and 10lbs of pancake mix . Impact provided all of the pasta, pasta sauce, pancake mix, mac and cheese, cookies and snacks for this trip and helped fund the purchase of the refrigerated items needed! If you are looking for a 4 day meal plan, leave a comment below and I'd be happy to walk you through what we did and how we planned to feed over 20 people (including leaders) from a campsite for 4 days.
It was great to get away from the chaos of city living and to escape into the woods for some peace and adventure, group bonding, and time spent with the Lord! THANK YOU to everyone who supports us and helps us to make these trips possible!