Canoe Trip: All In The Same Boat!

Just Minutes before we set out on the water the sun came out to warm us up.


After only knowing each other for a few days, we were split into two groups and pushed into Lake of the Woods, for a canoe trip. First thing in the morning the weather was discouraging as it was rainy, cloudy, cold, and windy. But by the afternoon, as we were about to leave the sun started to shine. It felt great and got me more excited and encouraged.
I started out as midship (not paddling, in the middle) and was feeling quite heavy, trying to encourage others through the wind and the waves. I noticed that throughout our whole trip we were encouraging and helping, as best as we could.
I look back at it now and realize what an amazing and unique experience it was. Our leaders/guides were awesome. We saw some neat wildlife and I learnt a lot.
By Hannah Weber
 
 
 
 
After registration and hurried good byes to loved ones, 31 complete strangers stepped through van doors and into a new world of excitement, adventure and enthralling relationships. Our first initiation into this new chapter of our lives would prove to be a gruelling experience not only physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well. Split into two groups we both faced incredible, and at times what seemed to be insurmountable obstacles that could only be overcome through faith, friendship, and a little help from the HMS Pioneer III (The boat that came to rescue us!).
Through these trials and tribulations the two groups became united not only as individual groups but rather as one body together with Christ, separated by no man under God’s supreme reign.
By Dave Young & Reuben Loeppky
 

Our site started off with a canoe trip like no other. The weather was terrible, the waves were insane, but the memories and bonding that we had with our new ‘family’ made it so worth it.
We focused on finding beauty and then brokenness in the wilderness. Never did I expect what God was ready to reveal to me. Beauty was initially the most amazing star-filled sky, but then I saw how God can reveal beauty through the broken. I not only saw beauty in God’s creation but also in the people surrounding me. Constant encouragement got us across, what seemed like, a raging sea. It was awesome.
Brokenness could have been our spirits due to the rain, the cold, a wind like no other, and no clean or dry clothes. However, God used those circumstances to not only bring us incredibly close but to reveal a different form of beauty to me.
As terrified as I was going into this trip, I wouldn’t trade our experience for any other. I came back feeling like I had just caught a small glimpse of God’s beauty and that alone left me in awe.
By Kim Ball
 

We finished our trip on P3, the faithful camp boat. Not quite the ending we had imagined for our canoe trip, but we made it safe and sound.