D2S 2016

This year was my fifth Dare2Share and Terry's ninth. Now that we are out of babies it's so nice that I'm able to go along for trips. Once again we went to Denver, combining our group with one from South Canyon Baptist and sharing a bus. Here is the group - all 56 of us.

We departed Rapid by 830am Friday March 12 and arrived in Denver seven hours later in time to eat some Chic-Fil-A for dinner. From there we went to the church where the event was held. Here's Jordyn, Allison, and Gabe ready for it to start. The first night was...weird. Definitely not the best Dare2Share we'd ever attended.

I'm probably getting old. It was loud and dark. Lots of energy and kids. Overall the conference was good; our students were challenged and grew in their faith. 

The following day some of us ate at Chipotle, like Natasha here. :)

In the past we've always done the evangelism sharing portion of Saturday afternoon at a mall. Since the event was nearly a month later this year, we had much better weather and we were able to be outside. Last year it was frigid but that weekend was absolutely beautiful. Notice how no one is wearing a coat. This year we went to the Red Rocks Amphitheater, which you can see behind Aaron who is giving directions on how we were going to share.

I'd never been there and was excited! 

When we arrived we huddled up in small groups and prayed. 

My group consisted of these ladies, Jazmin and Katrina, and Terry. 

Terry had the first spiritual conversation right there next to the parking lot and then we continued up the mountain to the amphitheater. Another of our groups was having a friendly discussion with a group of young people on the stairs.

Aaron challenged us that after we all had had a spiritual conversation we should attempted to run up all the steps with a single stride per step. He said it was impossible so obviously everyone wanted to prove him wrong. There goes Sierra.

I had a conversation with a couple who turned out to be Christians from Laramie and then I tried again with a man who wasn't interested. After that I took some photos and tried the stairs myself.  

It was so beautiful! 

Here's my own pathetic attempt to climb the stairs. I didn't feel up to running up them so I just tried to stride. I made it about two thirds of the way up. Very difficult! Several of the students did make it though. Poor Aaron owed a lot of them dessert.

Terry then shared with this Hispanic man.

At the top. 

View to the north. 

And south.

East. 

Terry and I took a few selfies at the top right before we left. It was windy and bright... 

Blink! 

Panoramic and me trying to get out of the way. 

Here's part of our group on our way down.

I didn't want to leave!

I liked it there.  

After returning to the church for the finish of the night we went to a restaurant for pizza. Here's me and girls. 

The crazy youth pastors, Terry and Josh. 

This guy was a joke to the students - he was freaky! Some of the girls thought it would be hilarious to place him in front of people's doors (from our group), knock, hide, and then the people would be freaked out by him when they opened their door. It didn't work as well as they thought but they still had fun. 

I spent my evening playing Heads Up! with students. Fun times. 

When we finished and started heading to our rooms I noticed there was a large boisterous group right outside my room and Terry was in the midst of them. They were interacting and debating with a crazy lady that was staying in the hotel. I had thought she worked there because we saw her the morning before when she had gone out to our bus to pray over it and announced that a "big angel" was now in there.

Some of the girls had begun talking to her and she had elevated the conversation quickly. She asserted that she was a Levitical priestess who could forgive sins, control the weather and many other crazy things. She was being rather rude to the girls so Terry stepped in. She was unreasonable because she was mentally unbalanced. The whole interaction really upset two girls in particular who were crying and freaking out. To be honest, D2S always has elevated emotions because of the lack of sleep. But for these two girls, because of this interaction, their faith grew quite a bit. Once rededicated her life to Christ and the other said she saw God working in her afterwards. It was an intense night.

I had to wrangle the remaining pranking students together so we could finally go to bed. It was like 1130pm.

The following day we drove home and stopped in Sydney, NE for Runza. Yay! 

Good ol' Runza, how we love you.

As we were passing to the east of Bridgeport and Scottsbluff I saw a couple monuments we've been learning about from the American Oregon Trail - Courthouse and Jail Rock. I sent a photo to my mom to show the kids.

This is what it looks like up close. Look at those old covered wagon ruts from the Oregon Trail! 

We stopped one last time in Hot Springs for a bathroom break and prayed all together. 

Jenna did this constantly over the weekend and educated me about it. Apparently a football player did it after touchdowns and it's called Dabbing... 

Every time we got on the bus we counted off to 56 to make sure we had all of us present. We made it into a game. The quickest we ever got through was 23 or 25 seconds.

Terry had begun to feel sick the evening before, Saturday, so by the time we got home Sunday night he was feeling terrible. The following day he was diagnosed with Influenza A! Poor guy. He gets sick after every single trip.