Ropes in a Bag

I'll keep this brief because I'm tired. Today we went to Outland Adventures, which is a ropes course that Matt started seven years ago. They minister to high school kids, using various elements on the ropes course to share the gospel. For those who don't know, a ropes course is kind of like an obstacle course, but not really. It involves lots of different elements, some of which are way up in the trees. Today we joined their staff as they got some training on a new aspect of the ministry.

Outland Adventures has been informed by one of their sponsors that if they can figure out a way to follow up with students after they have completed the three day camp, those students will be provided with a full scholarship to university. Outland has responded by initiating a program that the students can use to share their experience with their classmates that were not at the camp.

The program is call "Ropes Course in a Bag". Today our friends Manny and Heather (she is a student at Newlife) were teaching the staff how to use this new tool. They will train students how to use some very simple objects (rope, hula hoops, marbles, etc.) to do team building exercises with their peers, using the activities to share the gospel. This way, everyone gets to share in the experience, even though they may not have the opportunity to visit the ropes course.

Basically, we just played fun games all day and learned how to use them as object lessons. It was lots of fun and we got dirty and now we're very tired. Please be praying that we get our immigration stuff done in a timely manner. We have to extend our tourist visa and then apply for a missionary visa. As we discovered this week, when working with the Filipino government, things may not go as planned.

Cheers,
Tim.