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 15:12-13).
Hey gang: I have
begun to dig into the recesses of my brain and write the whys, 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 is a seventeen-day, wilderness experience
that changes the lives of young guys and gals; 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: one of the staff 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 that!
I stood there watching as they completed the orientation and
prepared and packed the bus in readiness to 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 who 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 blessings. 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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