The Many Perils of Traveling to Camp: Camp Unleashed 2006

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This is as good as a picture of the van as I could find. It was being used for our Border Patrol Ministry here.

This week I'm going to tell you about all the crazy camp trips we've embarked on. Pretty much every year something insane happened. It should be noted, everyone made it out of these situations alive and healthy.

Though we went to camp in 2005, I don't remember anything too eventful happening. So, I'll start with Camp Unleashed.

The year was 2006. We had the privilege of bringing a small group to camp with Forestville Baptist Church. It was going to be an experience like we'd never had before. Student's would be rocked and the trajectory of many lives would be changed. Camp Unleashed was great.

We had a church death trap van. It was a modified '82 Dodge 15 passenger van that a gracious church had given to us a few years early. It was modified to fit inside the confines of the law. Around that time a law was passed that wouldn't allow any more than 12 passengers on a formerly 15 passenger van. Blah, blah, blah, something about them not being safe, blah, blah, blah. Really, nothing too important.

Dwayne Humphrey was the name of our driver. He had the task of getting us to and from camp safely. We were on our way to camp. We were just at the point where we were leaving the highway and entering onto the interstate. While Dwayne was accelerating up to interstate speed a rear tire exploded. I was driving a mini-van in front of him. I remember looking back at his van in the rearview mirror, and seeing whole van rock form the explosion. In an attempt to get everything under control Mr. Humphrey compensated by swerving all over the road. The front left bumper of the van dipped to the ground as if to catch itself, the back end rocked like a boat in rough waters, and panic was on the face of every passenger. I sincerely thought it was over. The van was going to flip, and I was scared for the lives of everyone along for the ride.

By the grace of God the van never flipped and Dwayne was able to get it under control, slow it down, and pull off the road. We replaced the blown tire with the spare and continued our trip to camp without any more incidents.

On the way home, Pastor Trey was driving this time, ANOTHER tire blew. We didn't have a spare because we had already used it. We ended up being stuck in Walterboro, SC for about 3 hours. We threw all the luggage out of the van and laid on it out in the grass while we waited on the van to be repaired. For one of the first times in camp history I used a now infamous line, "We're just making memories guys."

We DID make it home safe and no animals or students were hurt in the writing of this blogpost.

Oh yeah, and this is just the tip of the iceberg that is our trips to summer camp.