God's Sense of Humor

The summer is flying by. This group of kids will be gone by the end of the week and 2B will begin on Sunday.

Last night, we went on our second camp out for this session. We went to a place called Joshua's Hollow. It was my first time at this camp site. It is one of the shortest hikes that you can take. There is a good size creek to play in and a small covered shelter. We made it there pretty early and got enough wood gathered together to cook dinner. At 5pm we started to hear thunder so we decided to cook dinner early. Just as we got the first batch on the fire, it poured rain and started to thunder and lightening. This lasted till about 7pm. The other cabins in our tribe that were at other campsites had already hiked back to camp. We were told to wait it out since we had a shelter. The rain went away by 7:30 and we built the fire back up from wet wood, which was interesting, and were able to get the meals cooked.

The weather was fine for the rest of the camp out.

2:30AM the next morning: I wake up because I heard something drop to the ground. I reach over to the pocket in my hammock and the bear mace is not there. I look around for it and finally see that it has fallen to the ground. I get one of the kids to pick it up and hand it to me. No big deal... When I go to put it back in the pouch, I notice that the safety clip has been flipped up. Not good... This is easy to fix though, in theory... All I had to do, per the directions, was just flip it back down and it's fixed. As I flip it down, a stream of bear mace shoot out into the air. Here's a little bit of background about bear mace.

Bear mace is like a high powered version of pepper spray. If sprayed directly into humans eyes it can cause serious damage. It if it gets on your skin or eyes indirectly then rinsing with soap and water does the trick. It does burn a little though. Bear mace is also a one time use. It's not like wasp/hornet spray where you can choose how much you spray. It's a one time shot that lasts about 5 seconds. It is used to spray in the face of a bear if they are getting ready to attack. It has the same effect that a normal can of pepper spray would have on a person. However, once sprayed, you must evacuate the campsite. Bear mace attracts bears, believe it or not... So, even if you spray it to get rid of a bear you still must leave. Once sprayed, you have about 30 min before bears start showing up.


Back to the story, the spray went off at 2:35am. By 2:55am we were hiking back up the trail. The response time to get everyone packed up and moved out was incredible. A few kids had come in contact with the spray, so we had them take a shower when the got back. The last person got back to the cabin by 3:30am. By 4am, everyone was in the cabin asleep. It was a long night to say the least, but at least everyone made it back safely.

It's kind of ironic, during the rain, while we were under the pavilion, I said a short prayer asking God to provide for us and get us through the night. Sometimes God has a funny sense of humor when answering prayers and doesn't always answer them in the way you want him to. Imagine that...