Friday it began...and kept going, and going, and going
Last Friday I was sick. It was just a normal cold, but it still didn’t feel good. I was tired because I hadn’t been sleeping well the last few weeks. I pretty much just wanted to sit down and be alone and cry…really, really hard. However, things didn’t turn out that way. I left for Nieuwegein, where I was to meet up with most of the other people that would also be attending the weekend. And so it began. I left extra early because I had to take the tram and I had to pick up a girl that’s from Congo. It’s good that I left super early because we were only about 20-25 minutes early. The girl that I picked up is a really great girl, but isn’t worried about being on time. So, that did end up stressing me out very much. I am about being on time, plus we had to walk from the tram to the church, and the last time I tried to do that I went in the wrong direction and wandered for about an hour. I wasn’t physically or mentally prepared to handle that once again. And so, we left IJsselstein, arrived in Nieuwegein, and successfully walked to the church. We were there with plenty of time to spare (that’s mostly because the group left a bit later then it was announced that we would, but that was fine by me).
An hour or so later we were there. Heilvort. Camp Runsvoort. We unloaded ourselves and unpacked our belongings. There was one room for all the girls, a very long room containing a lot of bunk beds. I chose a top bunk. After unpacking everything we had a little bit of time to hang out before the evening service. I was eagerly waiting for the midnight scheduled bedtime. That was my goal. The service came. We sang some songs. It was nice. Then a guy did a teaching on a passage in Titus. The theme for the weekend was Take Your Place, so he spoke on it for awhile. I was impressed that a 17 year old can speak for so long. I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to do it half as well.
The service was over and we had drinks available to us. Everybody sat around and chatted and stuff. It was really friendly and everything. Midnight was nearing. Suddenly, two friends, Eva and Deborah, came up to me and another friend, Daniel. They started asking him if we were going to go to bed that night. They asked him what he knew about what was going on with everything (he was on the team to help organize the weekend). Daniel claimed to know nothing of what they were talking about. They asked where Sander and Esther, two other team leaders, disappeared off to and what were they preparing. Daniel, again, claimed to know nothing. Their questions began to alarm me. It was now after midnight, and they were suggesting that we wouldn’t be going to bed, as was scheduled. No bed? Aw, man!!!
Suddenly, Sacha, the youth leader entered the room. He announced that he had a list of names and after he read it off he wanted those people to grab their coats and to meet him outside after 10 minutes. “Ferry, Deborah, Suzannah v d B, Kevin, Esther, Sander, Sarah, Wim, Christian, Stacie and…” and I can’t remember the last person’s name. He was one of the twins that were on the trip and I never figured out either of their names, much less which was which or how to tell them apart. Maybe I will later. The important thing is that he also called out Sarah, which meant I was to meet him outside with a jacket on. Uh-oh. 10 minutes later, I was outside. It was raining. I saw blinking lights over by the road. All was dark, except the blinking lights. I carefully and cautiously walked towards them. There was a car, with its hazard lights on. Behind the car was a covered trailer. They were connected, and the tarp flap that was used to shut the back of the trailer was open. It began to rain harder. I and the other guy there jumped in, knowing that we would inevitably have to anyway. We were right. The other nine people arrived and we were all told to jump in. Sacha asked that we sit down and that we not shine our flashlights on the sides of the trailer because you can see the light shining on the other side (in other words…we weren’t supposed to be riding around in a trailer). After that he closed the flap down, secured it, got in the car and began driving. I couldn’t believe what was happening!! Instead of being cozy and in bed we were sitting in the back of a trailer, being taken only God knew where, and it was dark and raining!!!!!! AND everything smelled like vinegar!!!! I felt the vehicle begin to move. Over the course of a long time Sacha drove awhile and often stopped the vehicle, pulling off the road and then getting going again, almost like he wasn’t sure where he was and needed to double check it on a map. Finally, he stopped and actually stepped out of the car, opening the tarp door. We stepped out onto a dirt road.
Sacha handed us a map. On it were three things written. First, he pointed out a circle on the map. He said that it was Camp Runsvoort, the place where we were scheduled to be sleeping right then (he didn’t say that last part, I did). There was another circle with an ‘X’ inside of it. He said that we were there (like those big maps inside of a mall…”you are here…X”. Then he turned the map over and said, “That’s my phone number.” He then instructed that we had to find our way back to the Camp using the map. When we arrived at the Camp we had to have everyone still with us. Somebody said that we could just go back the way that he brought us there, by way of the road. He informed us that it would take us much longer that way, that it wasn’t such a good idea. He then wished us luck, got in the car, and drove off. We stood there and watched him leave. I couldn’t believe he was doing this to us.
I turned around and took in my surroundings. We were at an intersection. The road went off into four directions. First was the direction that we came from. It was nice and paved. To the right of that I saw a road leading to a café, lights on outside, all dark inside. To the right of that was a dirt road that led into the woods. There was a light shining every kilometer or so, sometimes more. To the right of that was yet another dirt road leading into the woods, same situation as before. I looked down at the road beneath my feet. Scattered around the intersection were deep potholes filled with water. Ripples could be seen following every rain drop that splattered and disappeared on the surface of the puddles.
Looking back up, I saw that my group was cluttered around the map. Wim was unofficially the holder and studier of the map. After a few minutes of arguing about where we were to go, or where the best route was we finally began to walk following one of the dirt roads leading into the woods. It led in the exact opposite direction that the car had disappeared in, but it definitely looked as if the shortest route was through the woods, heading south along trails that were marked on the map. We entered the woods where we thought we intended to go, on a trail that is specifically made for horseback riding. The ground was merely soft sand that shifted beneath our feet, causing the walking to be much more difficult. We pushed on. The trail bended and we came out into a very large clearing. Sand was everywhere and it was impossible to see where we ought to head next in the dark. There seemed to be trails heading off in every direction. We made a turn right.
Not long after, we ended up back on a solid dirt road. When we looked down the road to our right we saw headlights. It was already about 1:30 in the morning, maybe 2:00, so we automatically knew that it had to be Sacha’s car with the next load of people. That meant that we ended up being right back where we had begun. Oh great!! We got absolutely nowhere. We walked back to the end of the road to meet the next group of people and have a little chat. Finally we were back on our way. Their group chose to go another way, along the same path that we started on. We perused our map and headed back down the road towards where we had exited the woods.
It didn’t take long for me to notice that we had two extra people. Two of the girls from the other group had left their group and tagged along with us. This irritated me greatly because that was against the rules. The rules were that we were to stay with our own group at all times. So now instead of having ten people to watch we actually had twelve. I also found it irritating because it meant that if the girls so easily left their group without telling anyone that they could just as easily leave our group and get lost. I am a relatively responsible person, and so this extra responsibility wasn’t at all appealing to me. I determined to keep my eyes on them as much as possible, because I didn’t feel like losing two young girls in the middle of the woods.
We walked on. We reentered the woods not far from where we had exited, using the map as our guide. It wasn’t a very great guide because the roads that were in the woods had names that weren’t on the map. We had a difficult time getting our bearings. Anyway, we were back on the horse riding trails with all the sand. We saw a frog at one point, which was fun because the twin was deathly afraid of it. Hee hee! We saw a mouse at another point, which was also fun because most of the girls, plus the twin, was afraid of it. It was funny. Anyway, it was still dark and we were still walking through the woods. Fortunately, the rain had stopped long before. Unfortunately, small arguments were breaking out about every 300 meters over where we were supposed to be heading. The silly boys were so determined to know it all and they were all right but all had different opinions. Well, we just kept on walking, finally getting the boys to stop stopping every 300 meters.
After what seemed to be a long time, and after a lot of struggling through the sand we were on a dirt road. The solidity of the road felt good, and we determined that we would be staying on the road for the rest of our adventure. By this time I had been extremely irritated and annoyed by all the useless fighting and the lack of leadership in the group. I was also irritated because three members of our group were missing. They had walked off, determined to find their own way back because they were sure that they were right and that they knew where they were going and they were sick of us not listening to them. They didn’t have a map. Fortunately, they did have a flashlight. However, their disappearance did bother me greatly.
After a bit of walking we ended up, once again, right where we’d originally started where Sacha let us out. By this time we’d had enough. We wanted to go back. We were hungry and tired. Thankfully, it wasn’t cold. We decided to walk the way that Sacha had brought us. Boy was it great when our feet touched down on that solid, paved road!! We were able to walk much more quickly. I was no longer irritated, which made things personally more pleasant. I found that I liked the two girls that snuck into our group. They were just young things, but they were interesting and very happy go lucky. I have a sneaking suspicion that they are sisters because if my sister Laurel had been there we would have behaved in a very similar way. One of them was wearing my sweatshirt that I lent her earlier that day because it was cold. Ironic. Another great thing is that Sander and Esther now held the map. They were the only ones looking at it, which meant that they didn’t have to sift through everyone’s thoughts along with their own. They knew where they were going, and they led well. This was the best part of the whole adventure. Everyone was able to chit-chat and get along. We were able to stay together as a group without having to watch as closely. There were street lamps! Oh, what bliss!!
After walking a long time we noticed a car driving our way. There was Sacha. He was heading back to pick up a group that had used the phone number on the map. They quit. He stopped to talk to us a bit. He told us that he thought it was really smart of us to be walking back along the road like we were. He was impressed. He gave us a few further directions and then drove off to pick up the other group. We kept walking. After ten minutes or so Sacha was back. He pulled over and opened up the trailer, wanting us to hop into the trailer. One guy jumped in. The rest of us refused. We were determined to finish it with honor, walking back, not giving up. We only had five kilometers to go. Sacha tried to talk sense into us, but we didn’t give in. Our one guy jumped back out, determining to not give up all by himself. Sacha closed the trailer and drove off.
We walked. Finally we were there. We never regretted our decision to keep walking. It had been a nice walk, full of conversation, making acquaintances. When we walked into the Camp there was hot soup waiting for us. We got in line and sat down to eat. Unfortunately, we had to tell Sacha about the three missing people from our group. We’d called them long before he first met up with us, trying to find out where they were and to get them back with us but they had refused to cooperate, claiming that they were already back home. When Sacha heard he called them and tried to figure out where they were. They finally arrived back, about twenty minutes later. There was a slightly amusing discussion between them and Sacha that followed (things like that are always amusing after having such a long night…why is that?). After my second bowl of warm chicken soup I decided it was bedtime. I first took a shower, knowing that a ton of people would be fighting for the showers when we got up in a few hours. The shower was ok. It was sometimes really hot and then really cold. By the time it was over I’d nearly gone through shock. Ha ha. Finally, I was climbing into my bed. I curled up in my sleeping bag. I could hear all the guys still out in the dining area laughing and shouting. They were having a great old time. But I was in bed. And I was happy.
An hour or so later we were there. Heilvort. Camp Runsvoort. We unloaded ourselves and unpacked our belongings. There was one room for all the girls, a very long room containing a lot of bunk beds. I chose a top bunk. After unpacking everything we had a little bit of time to hang out before the evening service. I was eagerly waiting for the midnight scheduled bedtime. That was my goal. The service came. We sang some songs. It was nice. Then a guy did a teaching on a passage in Titus. The theme for the weekend was Take Your Place, so he spoke on it for awhile. I was impressed that a 17 year old can speak for so long. I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to do it half as well.
The service was over and we had drinks available to us. Everybody sat around and chatted and stuff. It was really friendly and everything. Midnight was nearing. Suddenly, two friends, Eva and Deborah, came up to me and another friend, Daniel. They started asking him if we were going to go to bed that night. They asked him what he knew about what was going on with everything (he was on the team to help organize the weekend). Daniel claimed to know nothing of what they were talking about. They asked where Sander and Esther, two other team leaders, disappeared off to and what were they preparing. Daniel, again, claimed to know nothing. Their questions began to alarm me. It was now after midnight, and they were suggesting that we wouldn’t be going to bed, as was scheduled. No bed? Aw, man!!!
Suddenly, Sacha, the youth leader entered the room. He announced that he had a list of names and after he read it off he wanted those people to grab their coats and to meet him outside after 10 minutes. “Ferry, Deborah, Suzannah v d B, Kevin, Esther, Sander, Sarah, Wim, Christian, Stacie and…” and I can’t remember the last person’s name. He was one of the twins that were on the trip and I never figured out either of their names, much less which was which or how to tell them apart. Maybe I will later. The important thing is that he also called out Sarah, which meant I was to meet him outside with a jacket on. Uh-oh. 10 minutes later, I was outside. It was raining. I saw blinking lights over by the road. All was dark, except the blinking lights. I carefully and cautiously walked towards them. There was a car, with its hazard lights on. Behind the car was a covered trailer. They were connected, and the tarp flap that was used to shut the back of the trailer was open. It began to rain harder. I and the other guy there jumped in, knowing that we would inevitably have to anyway. We were right. The other nine people arrived and we were all told to jump in. Sacha asked that we sit down and that we not shine our flashlights on the sides of the trailer because you can see the light shining on the other side (in other words…we weren’t supposed to be riding around in a trailer). After that he closed the flap down, secured it, got in the car and began driving. I couldn’t believe what was happening!! Instead of being cozy and in bed we were sitting in the back of a trailer, being taken only God knew where, and it was dark and raining!!!!!! AND everything smelled like vinegar!!!! I felt the vehicle begin to move. Over the course of a long time Sacha drove awhile and often stopped the vehicle, pulling off the road and then getting going again, almost like he wasn’t sure where he was and needed to double check it on a map. Finally, he stopped and actually stepped out of the car, opening the tarp door. We stepped out onto a dirt road.
Sacha handed us a map. On it were three things written. First, he pointed out a circle on the map. He said that it was Camp Runsvoort, the place where we were scheduled to be sleeping right then (he didn’t say that last part, I did). There was another circle with an ‘X’ inside of it. He said that we were there (like those big maps inside of a mall…”you are here…X”. Then he turned the map over and said, “That’s my phone number.” He then instructed that we had to find our way back to the Camp using the map. When we arrived at the Camp we had to have everyone still with us. Somebody said that we could just go back the way that he brought us there, by way of the road. He informed us that it would take us much longer that way, that it wasn’t such a good idea. He then wished us luck, got in the car, and drove off. We stood there and watched him leave. I couldn’t believe he was doing this to us.
I turned around and took in my surroundings. We were at an intersection. The road went off into four directions. First was the direction that we came from. It was nice and paved. To the right of that I saw a road leading to a café, lights on outside, all dark inside. To the right of that was a dirt road that led into the woods. There was a light shining every kilometer or so, sometimes more. To the right of that was yet another dirt road leading into the woods, same situation as before. I looked down at the road beneath my feet. Scattered around the intersection were deep potholes filled with water. Ripples could be seen following every rain drop that splattered and disappeared on the surface of the puddles.
Looking back up, I saw that my group was cluttered around the map. Wim was unofficially the holder and studier of the map. After a few minutes of arguing about where we were to go, or where the best route was we finally began to walk following one of the dirt roads leading into the woods. It led in the exact opposite direction that the car had disappeared in, but it definitely looked as if the shortest route was through the woods, heading south along trails that were marked on the map. We entered the woods where we thought we intended to go, on a trail that is specifically made for horseback riding. The ground was merely soft sand that shifted beneath our feet, causing the walking to be much more difficult. We pushed on. The trail bended and we came out into a very large clearing. Sand was everywhere and it was impossible to see where we ought to head next in the dark. There seemed to be trails heading off in every direction. We made a turn right.
Not long after, we ended up back on a solid dirt road. When we looked down the road to our right we saw headlights. It was already about 1:30 in the morning, maybe 2:00, so we automatically knew that it had to be Sacha’s car with the next load of people. That meant that we ended up being right back where we had begun. Oh great!! We got absolutely nowhere. We walked back to the end of the road to meet the next group of people and have a little chat. Finally we were back on our way. Their group chose to go another way, along the same path that we started on. We perused our map and headed back down the road towards where we had exited the woods.
It didn’t take long for me to notice that we had two extra people. Two of the girls from the other group had left their group and tagged along with us. This irritated me greatly because that was against the rules. The rules were that we were to stay with our own group at all times. So now instead of having ten people to watch we actually had twelve. I also found it irritating because it meant that if the girls so easily left their group without telling anyone that they could just as easily leave our group and get lost. I am a relatively responsible person, and so this extra responsibility wasn’t at all appealing to me. I determined to keep my eyes on them as much as possible, because I didn’t feel like losing two young girls in the middle of the woods.
We walked on. We reentered the woods not far from where we had exited, using the map as our guide. It wasn’t a very great guide because the roads that were in the woods had names that weren’t on the map. We had a difficult time getting our bearings. Anyway, we were back on the horse riding trails with all the sand. We saw a frog at one point, which was fun because the twin was deathly afraid of it. Hee hee! We saw a mouse at another point, which was also fun because most of the girls, plus the twin, was afraid of it. It was funny. Anyway, it was still dark and we were still walking through the woods. Fortunately, the rain had stopped long before. Unfortunately, small arguments were breaking out about every 300 meters over where we were supposed to be heading. The silly boys were so determined to know it all and they were all right but all had different opinions. Well, we just kept on walking, finally getting the boys to stop stopping every 300 meters.
After what seemed to be a long time, and after a lot of struggling through the sand we were on a dirt road. The solidity of the road felt good, and we determined that we would be staying on the road for the rest of our adventure. By this time I had been extremely irritated and annoyed by all the useless fighting and the lack of leadership in the group. I was also irritated because three members of our group were missing. They had walked off, determined to find their own way back because they were sure that they were right and that they knew where they were going and they were sick of us not listening to them. They didn’t have a map. Fortunately, they did have a flashlight. However, their disappearance did bother me greatly.
After a bit of walking we ended up, once again, right where we’d originally started where Sacha let us out. By this time we’d had enough. We wanted to go back. We were hungry and tired. Thankfully, it wasn’t cold. We decided to walk the way that Sacha had brought us. Boy was it great when our feet touched down on that solid, paved road!! We were able to walk much more quickly. I was no longer irritated, which made things personally more pleasant. I found that I liked the two girls that snuck into our group. They were just young things, but they were interesting and very happy go lucky. I have a sneaking suspicion that they are sisters because if my sister Laurel had been there we would have behaved in a very similar way. One of them was wearing my sweatshirt that I lent her earlier that day because it was cold. Ironic. Another great thing is that Sander and Esther now held the map. They were the only ones looking at it, which meant that they didn’t have to sift through everyone’s thoughts along with their own. They knew where they were going, and they led well. This was the best part of the whole adventure. Everyone was able to chit-chat and get along. We were able to stay together as a group without having to watch as closely. There were street lamps! Oh, what bliss!!
After walking a long time we noticed a car driving our way. There was Sacha. He was heading back to pick up a group that had used the phone number on the map. They quit. He stopped to talk to us a bit. He told us that he thought it was really smart of us to be walking back along the road like we were. He was impressed. He gave us a few further directions and then drove off to pick up the other group. We kept walking. After ten minutes or so Sacha was back. He pulled over and opened up the trailer, wanting us to hop into the trailer. One guy jumped in. The rest of us refused. We were determined to finish it with honor, walking back, not giving up. We only had five kilometers to go. Sacha tried to talk sense into us, but we didn’t give in. Our one guy jumped back out, determining to not give up all by himself. Sacha closed the trailer and drove off.
We walked. Finally we were there. We never regretted our decision to keep walking. It had been a nice walk, full of conversation, making acquaintances. When we walked into the Camp there was hot soup waiting for us. We got in line and sat down to eat. Unfortunately, we had to tell Sacha about the three missing people from our group. We’d called them long before he first met up with us, trying to find out where they were and to get them back with us but they had refused to cooperate, claiming that they were already back home. When Sacha heard he called them and tried to figure out where they were. They finally arrived back, about twenty minutes later. There was a slightly amusing discussion between them and Sacha that followed (things like that are always amusing after having such a long night…why is that?). After my second bowl of warm chicken soup I decided it was bedtime. I first took a shower, knowing that a ton of people would be fighting for the showers when we got up in a few hours. The shower was ok. It was sometimes really hot and then really cold. By the time it was over I’d nearly gone through shock. Ha ha. Finally, I was climbing into my bed. I curled up in my sleeping bag. I could hear all the guys still out in the dining area laughing and shouting. They were having a great old time. But I was in bed. And I was happy.
posted by Sarah Riendeau @ 10/07/2005 01:45:00 PM
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