My latest article just went live over at Simply Youth Ministry; you can find it here. Kind of a fun memory (after the fact!) from our 2011 middle school winter retreat. Read it and let me know what you think!

We loaded up several 15-passenger vans and hit the road for what should have been a 20-minute drive from our middle school winter retreat to the snow tubing mountain. Halfway there it started to rain, but it didn’t seem like a big deal. I didn’t know at the time just how bad it would get.

We were within a mile of the snow tubing entrance when I began to realize we were in trouble. The car in front of us slid off the road into the snow bank, effectively blocking everyone. What I thought was just a wet road was actually a quarter inch of ice!  As traffic backed up, my leaders and I hopped out to help—and that’s when my heart started to beat fast. These mountainous back roads were like ice skating rinks. With the rest of the way being uphill, even after we pushed the car out of the way, our vans couldn’t go any farther. I didn’t have a choice, we had to head back.

Unfortunately, it kept raining. And freezing. And five minutes later the first of our vans slid off the road. Then another one.  Read the rest of the article here.