The Schmidt Family: Outbreak Ski Retreat... (Jan 26-28, 2007)

This past week-end the Middle School Youth Group went on a retreat to Camp Little Cloud near Dubuque, IA. Our entire trip got started off with problems, but that didn't keep us from having an awesome time praising God and growing in our relationships with each other.
We started off on Friday afternoon with vehichles not wanting to start, and locking keys in the truck as soon as we arrived at the camp to unload. Through the help of Toni's husband (Rich Ochiltree) he helped to save the day by bringing keys for the truck as well as a new battery and jumper cables. (Which we needed for the bus as well.)

Friday night we went skiing at Sundown Mountain in Dubuque. We had a blast with a few who had never skied before, and with some who braved snow boarding. All in all fun was had by all...

The camp was very nice and equipt with a community room where we had great fires in the fire place and ate great food prepared for us by Toni Ochiltree...

We had a great worship leader named Lilia, who has recently overcome Malaria while serving God in Africa. She has such a heart for God and the kids she works with. She was great to get to know and the kids loved her...

Shelby, Neal Johnson, and Angie Allgood got the opportunity to help Lilia lead Worship time throughout the whole week-end...

It was so awesome to watch these kids praise God. I was blown away by the presence of God this week-end...

Ernie had the kids take a walk outside in the middle of the sessions on Saturday. It was so beautiful out there. He challanged the kids to walk back to the cabin in complete silence just talking to and being in God's presence...

Saturday night we went to a Hockey Game at the Five Flags Center in Dubuque. The kids had a great time making a ton of noise and blowing very loud (and annoying) horns most of the game. Dubuque won and the bus only stalled on us a few times trying to get to the game...

This is our bus who has lots of problems, with our wonderful group of about 45 people...

This is the chartered bus that came to rescue us, and take us home when our bus would not start (after a few hours of trying to fix our bus and get it started)...

It was way more comfortable that our old bus to ride home in. We were spoiled with DVD's to watch, and most importantly (to me)HEAT! It was definitely an answer to prayer when the owner of the bus said we didn't owe him anything for coming all that way to take us back to Muscatine. What a kind man (and a huge blessing from God.)

Then when we were trying to leave, with all of the kids safely loaded on the Chartered bus, Toni's truck couldn't make it out of the lane and got stuck in the snow...

We ended up leaving Toni and Tim behind to wait for the tow truck to come and pull them out of the snow. The catch was that all of the luggage was in Toni's horse trailer.

We arrived back at Calvary around 4:30pm. (only 1 1/2 hours late.) Then, we waited for the truck which arrived at Calvary at about 6pm, to get our luggage.