The Happening: Part Two

So, after saying I would write about the Happening, I never did!

It was a really great experience, and I'm glad I went. Jeremy and Luke are both glad they went, too.
The weekend was pretty much full of surprises. The staff is mostly made up of youth, and there were various positions. Each staff member was also given a topic and a guideline for talking about that topic, all from a Christian viewpoint, of course. So there was some serious stuff, but then there were some really fun surprises to balance it out.
On Saturday, at both breakfast and lunch we had place mats. They were hand drawn, and some had a picture, some gave you an activity to do, etc., You had to stand up and say what your place mat said or do what it told you to do. Jeremy had one that said "Tell the rector and observing a rector a knock-knock joke". Luke had a mad lib he had to fill in. I had to mime being stuck in a box and get the person next to me to let me out. Someone had to get up and do a dance. They were fun!
There was three buildings to this church: The old church, the new church, and the hall (where we spent most of our time). But we were in the new church for something Saturday night, and then they made all of us close our eyes, hold hands, and they started leading us somewhere. They led us around for ages! It was getting ridiculous. And finally, they said to open our eyes, and we were in the hall (so you know, 15 feet from the new church building we had been in), which was decorated with tons of streamers and balloons, and there was music, and punch and candy, and glowsticks and all sorts of little party toys. It was a surprise party! So, that was pretty fun.
Oh, and there's "candidates" which are the people who have never been to the Happening before. The candidates were split into three "families" and each family had a "gofer" (because they go for this and go for that...). My family consisted of: Mary, Owen, Levi, and Dee Dee (who is a really sweet girl who moved from Thailand last year). I wasn't so sure about my family at first, but they ended up being pretty cool.
My least favorite part of the weekend was bedtime: The room the girls were staying in was full of bugs, and we were sleeping on the floor (I have no idea why I didn't think to bring my camping cot). I woke up with a bug on my face! Gross!
Sunday the weather was really nice, so we spent a good portion of time outside. Which reminds me of Luke's incident...
They had yogurt and donuts for breakfast. The yogurt was specifically Gogurt, so it was in the plastic tube. I could not get mine open. I tried and I tried and I tried, but it would not open! Luke told me to squeeze it, but I thought that was a bad idea. He insisted though, so I passed it off to him. He folded it in half so he could squeeze it harder, and he was aiming it at the ground, but when it finally broke, it shot yogurt a good 20-30 feet, right onto one of the adult leader's cars. Oops. I was laughing really hart at Luke, but I was slightly concerned about what Jen- the car owner - would think. She was amused, thankfully!
Now, on both Saturday and Sunday (or was it Friday and Sunday?) we got "Caritas" bags. I believe that's Greek for love. The bags were filled with little gifts and notes from the staff members at the Happening, or from people from our churches. They were really nice!
Oh, and Sunday, they had a closing ceremony. Each family was asked to come up and talk about their poster (each family was required to design one based on something they had in common), and have someone from the family talk about their experience. After that, each candidate was given a cross necklace and a Bible. Oh, and earlier that day we had been give a Bible devotion book. I believe it's called the One Minute Bible, and it was one 1 minute devotion for each day of the year.

So, that's barely touching on everything. There's so many other things to talk about, but I don't want to right a ridiculously long post, so for now I'm going to leave it at that.