Happy New Year, everyone!

Last weekend we got back from our Young Life Utah snowboarding trip. We took 9 kids. One of these kids was Phillip, who had never been to anything with Young Life before. He only heard about the trip through our lunch club at Madison High School.

Phillip is a senior and plays football and basketball. Two of my friends sponsored Phillip to go on the trip for free. He had never been snowboarding. He had never even seen snow before!

Skylar, one of our leaders, lent Phillip everything he needed for the trip- snowboard, boots, and clothes. All he had to do was to show up.

I wish you all could have seen Phillip’s excitement. He skipped the snowboarding lesson on the first day, and just went for it. He was out snowboarding more than any of us combined, and by day 3 was as good as the rest of us. When it was time to leave the mountain each day, some of us were so tired that we would be on the bus already, half an hour before it left. Phillip would come right from his last run, and hop on the bus about 5 minutes before it left, covered in snow. He didn’t want to miss a minute.

The last night of club, all the kids were invited into a relationship with Jesus. The other 8 of our kids had accepted Jesus into their lives, and were at all different places in their walks with God. Phillip loud and clear, was the first one you could hear repeating the worship leaders words of the prayer. When everyone was told they could open their eyes, there was Phillip’s hand raised (along with many, many others).

On the bus on the way home, he said to me across the aisle, “Chelsea, thank you.” “For what, Phillip?” “For making all of this happen.” Then he sang, somewhat off-key to the tune of Rockin around the Christmas tree — “Standing around on the Christmas tree,” just that line, over and over. It was pretty funny, and hard to miss his excitement and the impact this trip had on his life. I just had to share this story.

God Bless,
Chelsea