Stories of travels and reflection by Mark

This past week has been blur. After leaving the Gingerich homestead just outside of Iowa City, Randy, Matt, Elizabeth and I spent two days in a state park south of Omaha. We tested out our camping equipment and practiced some primitive fire-ring culinary skills. Our retreat in the woods was a time to refocus on the upcoming weekend and get to know each other better. Jess would join us on Thursday before we headed north to Sioux Falls, but for now Randy, Matt, Elizabeth and I enjoyed exploring the campground.
Ray, a diesel mechanic at a nearby truck stop who decided to camp instead of drive home every night to save gasoline, was a very nice middle-aged man. He wore paint stained work jeans without a belt and a grey sleeveless tee shirt. He pulled in at about 3pm, set up his tent in a feisty wind next door, and left again until later Wednesday evening. I asked him then if he knew what the weather was supposed to do and a half hour later I returned to my own campsite having heard about his interest in auto mechanics since he was 13, a troubled relationship with the woman in his life, and his desire to see New York city someday.
Ray wasn’t noisy, he wasn’t bothersome and didn’t cause us any concern. It was the two younger gentlemen we met the night before who had been drinking heavily in the same adjacent campsite that made us wary. Though earlier in the day they showed us a neat trick with a lighter full of butane and a fire bed of hot coals, we weren’t all that disappointed when a few park rangers came by at 10:30 responding to their loud voices asking them to quiet down. By the next day they had moved on but not before their self-disclosure of being “stoners and drunks and broke.” We told them we were broke to - in debt from college - and we all had a good laugh about having that in common.

Wednesday afternoon, before Ray pulled in, a strong northern wind blew dark clouds overhead. The gnats disappeared with the humidity as the sky darkened. I was out trying a new walking stick I had found and Randy and Matt had taken the van to at the local HyVee grocery store using the wifi hotspot in their deli. Elizabeth was reading back at the campsite but it hadn’t started raining or anything. The clouds were dark and the wind was still picking up so I headed back. It began sprinkling – large drops coming in at an angle with the wind, but nothing to write home about. I walked on getting a little wet but worrying more about what might happen to our campsite if the clouds began to pour like they threatened. I quickened my pace but as I crested the hill saw nothing of Elizabeth at the site. The wind was blowing something mighty and our purple and grey Coleman tent was all but collapsed, fighting to stay up against the gusts. I swung off my backpack and unzipped the door opening in one motion. Elizabeth was inside half holding up the tent and half rearranging the sleeping bags away from the door. We greeted each other quickly and I noticed my blue rain jacket near the entrance rolling toward me begging to be put on despite the still-only-spitting rain. I grabbed it and slipped it on as I pulled our trailer under the safety of the large cottonwood tree at our campsite. Before I could walk back from the trailer to the tent the weather changed. The rain came down. With my shoes already wet and my torso dry with the rain jacket on I decided to try to help hold up the still fighting tent. Elizabeth, inside, worked to keep our bedrolls on the dry side. Matt and Randy had been notified that the presence of their van with its steel roof and waterproof windows would be very beneficial at a time like this but they had still not arrived when it began to hail. I got clocked once with a small piece the size of a thimble right on the top of my head once, but must have scared others off with the questionable language I felt it necessary to use in response to the situation.
The rains subsided after 10 pounding minutes, and the dove flew out and returned with the white Windstar van. We wiped a little water out of the tent and hung up things to dry on a line in the gusting wind before parking the van close to the picnic table and starting our Coleman camp stove for a supper meal of canned chili, crackers, and fruit. Though the wind continued to blow, the storm cell had passed and we were home free, able to focus on getting to our rendezvous point to pick up Jess on Thursday.

Jess was waiting for us at exit 52 just off I-29 north with Deb, her mother, who had brought her east from their home in Cairo, Nebraska. She was bubbly and excited and her belongings fit well into the van and trailer – even a bicycle fit up on top of the trailer with Matt and Elizabeth’s road bikes. We drove north then up to Sioux Falls, South Dakota explaining our adventures and hearing of the family reunion Jess was returning from.

Conference Minister Ed Kauffman and his wife Gay welcomed us into their home for the weekend with Sermon on the Mount Mennonite. Their son, Sean, and I had attended Goshen College together a few years and they shared where and what he was up to now. Ed took us for a walk to a nearby park in the late afternoon and in the evening - after getting all our chit chat out of the way during van ride up - we met as a group for the first time, all five of us, for a serious meeting to discuss some logistics and goals all together in person.

Friday, the 4th of July, the five of us spent time at Sermon on the Mount Mennonite Church doing some yard clean up and a little tree trimming. In the afternoon we worked on our Sunday service and in the evening spent time at the home of Cheryl Lehmann, a Sermon on the Mount Mennonite member, over the supper hour. We played the Mennonite name game and talked about Sioux Falls and foreign travels and such things but later, in our musings about the evening, after the 4th fireworks, we lamented not getting into the sort of talk about the shalom vision that we had hoped to. We took time to remember one of the goals of our trip and reconfirmed our need to step out of our comfort zones to venture deeper into discussion than the surface level conversation that are easy yet so superfluous.

During a meal with Ed and Gay on Saturday, after our internal discussion about conversations, we brought up some significant questions to which Ed joked, “We brought the pizza, isn’t that enough!” Ed and Gay had some helpful thoughts about the their understanding of how a Shalom community would look in 2008 and how the seductiveness of “being comfortable” is an obstacle to living out the Kingdom. I agree, on the one hand why would we want to make ourselves uncomfortable, but on the other hand, Jesus never guaranteed a comfortable life for his followers. Living out the prophetic vision outlined in the Old Testament and reiterated by Jesus during the Sermon on the Mount, I think, is especially hard for us who are comfortable or have the means to become and stay comfortable. I have the means to become and stay comfortable…