Staff Goneburgers

In the middle of summer projects, there is typically a day or two where staff leaves to allow the students to take ownership of their own ministry. So, in order for our 50 students at Nelson Beachie to get to practice leadership and taking the initiative, we, the staff team left for about a day in a half. Where did we go? It's a secret :) Just kidding, we went to Lake Rotoitit where we spent some time together as a staff team getting to know each other, cooking for each other, studying the bible together, and debriefing about summer project and documenting information for the staff team next year.

We headed out to a cabin in the woods, and to our surprise, the owner didn't leave us the right key...so we were locked out...

The place looked nice, but here we are stuck on the outside.
Ok, so not really that dramatic. We drove to the neighbors and they had the key to let us in. One of the highlights for the boys was getting to chop wood out back. Ryan, Daniel, and Marlon did this for hours.

The next morning, the beautiful Penelope made breakfast.

And after all of our work was done documenting, we spent a little time at Lake Rotoiti. Seriously, you can't find a bad view in this place can you? We had made some friends at the lake the night before and they took us out on their boat around the lake which was pretty sweet.

We tramped (hiked) a bit through the bush (woods).
And the boys learned how to kayak.

And swam. The water looks nice, but it's ice cold. Ryan is about to find that out...

And then we headed back to the camp to check in on our students :)