2008 Destination: Thunder Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park      
Trip is July 26 - August 3

This is a unique opportunity designed for 9th graders and parents to grow closer to each other and to God. The wilderness has always been a setting where people can more clearly reflect on their purpose, goals, relationships, and priorities in life and what they need to do to fulfill them. Campfire conversations and activities on this trip serve to deepen this reflection in ways hard to duplicate in any other way. There are four main benefits of this trip:

Reflection: This trip provides time to reflect on five areas of life:

1.  God – communing with God intimately and in various ways 

2.  Self – learning you can do more than you think

3.  Family – giving thanks for those closest to you

4.  Community – realizing importance of supporting one another

5.  Nature – connecting with beauty and grace around you

Parent-child relationship: We include parents since ways of relating as parent and child are changing at this time. This relationship is less a parent-child and increasingly more an adult-adult relationship. This change can be more difficult for the parent than for their child. This Wilderness Trip can enhance the relationship and bond between parent and youth for the teenage years.

• Unique experience: The trip is designed to get away from civilization, to be sufficiently challenging, to bring along as little as possible, and to go to a place amazing in beauty and which few people ever see in order to provide a setting for reflection, relationship building, and as a rite-of-passage.
   

• Rite-of-passage: This experience is similar to the “rite-of-passage” that many cultures developed for youth at this age in order to grow the youth’s confidence and connection to community, nature, and God.