What a great time you can have skiing with a bunch of high school students. It can be a source of great joy and great frustration all at the same time. If you’d like to look at some of the pictures I took on this trip you can peruse my “ministry” photo set. I’ve added a few photos from the trip. None of them have descriptions though, sorry. Before I start describing the ski retreat itself I’ve got to tell you about our preliminary meeting. A week before we left on our trip we had a mandatory meeting with all the parents and students.
At this meeting we went over the policies, itinerary and other information they would need for the trip.
I also broke the news that they were not allowed to bring mp3 players, CD players, PSP’s and other high-tech devices. They took all this information in stride until, that is, I told them they couldn’t bring their cell phones either. At that point all their heads spontaneously exploded as they shouted reasons why they absolutely needed their cell phones at all times. They are, after all, their “life lines.” “Well,” I told them “you can do anything for 3 days. Even Chinese water torture takes longer to have any ill-effects on a victim.” They didn’t appreciate my sarcasm but were very good and didn’t bring any forbidden devices on the trip.
This was my second time skiing. None of the students, however, had ever been skiing before, in fact, I have the feeling this was their first time ever seeing any tangible amount of snow too. I think this because they had trouble walking in the snow without skis on; let alone telling them to strap waxed boards to their feet and pushing them down a steep incline. Yeah, that didn’t work too well. Most of them got through ski school and decided that was enough skiing for them. Others went down the “bunny” slope and quit. 
A few tried out the green slope and after falling 238 times decided to call it off. I was able to tackle the blue (intermediate) slope without falling; a feat of which I am thoroughly proud. But even with all the falling that occurred, no one was seriously injured (although a few egos got bruised) and everyone had a good time. We’ll be going back to Ski Ober Gatlinburg again next year.
One of the highlights of this trip to Gatlinburg was getting to meet Frank Sharp from Swap Blog face to face. He and his wife met the youth group and I at Ruby Tuesday’s for dinner on Wednesday night. He proved as easy to get along with face to face as he was online. It was such a great blessing to finally talk to the guy who has been a source of constant online encouragement. We mostly talked shop but occasionally sidetracked to other things. What a great guy!
