Welcome to Saturday night’s ice breaker games. People were divided into teams at random. And then each team had to produce an artist to draw an ISM staff member. (Note, the author of this post does not believe that any of the characters on Wesley’s napkin look like him. I resemble… err… resent that.)

And a poet. And a strongman. And a marksman. Yes, it was random, but there’s a certain power in silly games to bring bonding and laughter like no other. Eliah, our resident governator-type, did 83 push-ups in a row. Yes, 83! I don’t think I can do 83 in an entire day if I tried… with breaks. (note, the blog author has bad wrists and cannot do pushups) But it was pretty amazing to see him do 83.. and then watch Joe and Josiah try to break 50 and find themselves unable to.

This is Ken, our resident Korean military marksman. He couldn’t get the Nerf dart to hit a soda bottle. Amazingly, our star marksman–like in the Olympics–was a Korean woman… Mia.  (Okay, so Korean women dominate in archery and not shooting–its close enough) Yes, do not mess with her! I think she was as surprised as we were that she was able to hit anything.

This is how we wrapped a long day of hiking in the rain… with dinner (ribs and corn…  and ramen) and these fun games. I can’t wait until next year! And if you missed this trip, hopefully you can join us next year.  Until then, you can just practice in the mirror: “this is so fun…”

Well, we weren’t too scared… at least, not as scared as Sharon and Mia during the Bourne Identity. (We had a rock-paper-scissors contest to see which movie we would watch. Shufei, representing the movie Glory Road, handily won the 2 out of 3 contest. But being gracious, the men let the women watch Bourne Identity while some of us played Bang! and Settlers of Catan.) During the movie, I think some people almost regretted choosing to watch. (like Sharon and Mia) In the back, they started to hide their face behind pillows and screamed at every suspenseful moment. I heard one of the guys did as well, but he will remain nameless. (though I think he lurks around here like a panda…)

The drive to Yosemite in May was not what we expected. There was rain and snow. Yes, at the start of summer, it was snowing. (It kept the drivers awake!) And it rained on the entire hike up to Vernal Falls. But rain or shine, we were determined to enjoy Yosemite. The weather was cool, the rain was fairly light… so it was actually perfect hiking weather, aside from the fact that we were wearing rain jackets, wind breakers, and ponchos. (a bright red one!)

The scenery was beautiful, even though it was foggy. In fact, it was reminiscent of a Chinese mountain painting with the fog partially covering El Capitan and Half Dome. So it was great to see and be reminded that nature–which is so wondrous at times–was something that God called “good” when He created it.

In sum, we were thankful to enjoy nature, deeper relationships, and great food… even in the rain. (yes, we were in our nice houses a lot of the time too) I’ll have a separate post about the hilarious icebreaker games from Saturday night.

And instead of what have done in the past (rent a nice vacation home in Groveland), we are camping. As in, sleeping in tents outside, and doing all of our cooking around a campfire or propane gas fires. And the showers are limited. The English term for something like this is “roughing it”.

Because of space constraints, this event is invite only. (Sorry, we can only accomodate so many people in the tents that we were able to get from our church!) So if you did not receive an invitation, but feel that you should have, please talk to one of your friendly ISM staff.

Yosemite has so many trails, ranging from easy to intermediate to difficult. Now the question for everyone: what sort of hiking trails do you want to do? We want everyone’s input on this because we may split the group into 2 groups if enough people want to do something very rigorous. (Of course, this assumes that some people want to take a more leisurely stroll as well)

Please comment!