Jesus said, “This is my
commandment, that you love one another just as I loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one
lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:12-23).
Hey gang: I have
begun to dig into the recesses of my brain and write the why’s, the way’s and
the wondrous miracles that my bride and I were blessed to see in the early
development years of the Village. In my
research for Chapter One, The why and very
early years, I came across a picture of me and wondered why anyone would
have invested millions of dollars to bring my dream into reality-ville. I was a totally unknown quantity- to even my
charter board members.
There are times in
our lives when we are truly blessed with an experience that can only be placed
in the miracle file and can literally change our life. I had one of those experiences early in the
development of the Village. I thought I
was a giving person, up to that point in my life, but a group of wonderfully
dedicated young people mentored me into an entirely new level of sacrificial
giving.
Project Survive was a seventeen-day wilderness experience
that changed the lives of many young men; many of who had made very bad
decisions in their young lives. The
Upper Peninsula of Michigan is a unique battle ground when fighting for the
very lives of trouble youngsters.
The new recruits had arrived on campus with their normal,
salty attitudes and staff was equipping them for an experience they really did
not want to experience. They were
sorting gear when I received a tragic phone call from the State Police that one
of the team had been killed in a motorcycle accident in route to joining the
Project Survive Team.
I drove up to the camp site where each staff were dealing
with a multitude of problems and called the five men and two woman counselors
aside from the kids and told them that Jim would not be making this trip - he
had made another trip earlier in the day.
I gave them the option, I would notify the agencies to come and get the
kids and we would scrub this trip, but they would have no part of it.
As I stood there watching them complete the orientation in
preparation for getting in a bus ready, and begin the all-day trip in an air condition-less
bus to the Porcupine Mountains of the UP.
There they would begin their seventeen-day reclamation process with a
bunch of kids that did not want to be there and would do all in their power to
send that message - as clearly possible.
When I run into kids and staff from that group of warriors,
who endured that seventeen days of fighting everything from bears in camp to
horrendous black flies, all are quick to tell me they would never do it again
but they would not trade the experience for anything.
We learned that when we are willing to lay down our lives
and give sacrificially, God gives us His very special blessing. The lesson, there is no greater love than to deny self, take up your cross and give
of yourself to God to be used as He sees fit. There is no question in my mind this was the
toughest group of kids we sent into the UP that summer to fight the bears and
black flies, but it was also the group that benefited the most. God is good, all the time!
Blessings,
Gramps
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