Moments from Mondays Gone by...

I know that it has been a while since I've shared a Moment from Mondays Gone by but I was thinking about youth trips today.  Working with the youth at my church is the part time job that I am giving up to go back to school so I realized that I will not be going on a youth trip...at least for a while.  So...I am sharing one of my favorite youth trip moments as previously shared in another blog post.


We Were Making Great Time Until…




I went to Virginia this last weekend with our high school youth group. We took 3 vehicles…the van (an 11-seater), the bus (a 15-seater), and my personal car. We left the church at 5:30ish so had to make our way through DC traffic. Once we got off the beltway the van and the bus moved into the HOV lane. I, however, only had one individual in my car and was unable to do anything but watch them leave me sitting in traffic.



About an hour and a half later, while eating dinner, one of the youth leaders says, “Hey, where’s Janet?”



Meanwhile, back in my car, my co-director calls as says, “Where are you?” and I’m thinking, “uh…not very far from where you left me…” (skipping ahead…) I pull over at this scary gas station to wait for them. After going inside for my own dinner (Coke and Cheetos) I go back outside to sit in my car. I realize that the scary gas station is seriously in the middle of nowhere. It is pitch black out, it is late enough that there is very little traffic, I look over my left shoulder and notice that there is a creepy motel on the hill above the scary gas station and suddenly realize that no one would be able to hear me scream…



Half hour later I have a passenger and I am the caboose once again. And after one more bathroom break we started to make great time until…









…we hit the…







…tree.





Yes…all three vehicles.





Yes…the same tree.



The tree happened to be hanging over the highway. The van driver saw the tree at the last moment, swerved slightly and only ended up with a cracked windshield and a bent antenna. The bus driver didn’t see the tree until it was trying to get on the bus and ended up with a cracked windshield, a missing antenna, broken running lights and a completely sheared off side mirror. The bus was large enough that it bent the tree as it went by so it snapped back into place just in time for me to drive through it. I muttered a soft “ooew. I shouldn’t’ve hit that.” Thankfully, my car suffered no damage…because she’s short.



All in all, no one was hurt, we got to our destination and we all had a great weekend!