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Longenecker September 2020 Update
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Advanced Horse Camp
Our trip to Washington was amazing! While David was gone on the Salmon River, I stayed at Stonewater Ranch to help out with a horse trip. The trip was “advanced horse camp” so the girls on this trip had either come before, have their own horses, or had been a part of the Wild Hearts program last winter at the Ranch. The Wild Hearts program is for the girls in the local community to have a weekly Bible study and work on their horsemanship with the mustangs at Stonewater.
I was very nervous coming into the trip as I was working alongside people I hadn’t met before, and it had been three years since I had been involved in the horse program. The trip started on Monday and lasted through Friday. David and I arrived the Saturday before, so I made sure to hang out with the summer staff and get to know Clairesse, one of the other leaders on the horse trip.
There were five girls that came on the trip and three leaders. I had worked with 3 of the 5 girls previously, so I tried to spend some time to see what had changed in their lives and how they had grown. We rode that evening after a brief name game and a group contract on what we all wanted the week to look like. Each morning Clairesse would lead morning devotional times before we all left to tack up the horses. In the evenings a different leader would teach the girls with either another devotional or a Bible story.
“With” was our focus for the week with Joshua 1:9 being our memory verse. Over the course of the week I was reminded how much was in God’s control as He steered conversation and the focus to really being on “worth”. Many of the girls we worked with would ask about their self-worth or how we as leaders were so confident in who we were in today’s world.
One evening I told the story of Jacob, Rachel, and Leah to help share how even when you don’t see it, God sees you as beautiful. The next day I shared my testimony and lead an initiative called forced choice where I would ask everyone in the group to pick one of two options presented. (e.g. Dogs or Cats, been a victim of abuse or assault) It went really well as some of the girls weren’t very talkative, but could easily communicate through the activity based on the options I gave them.
With this camp being advanced, we leaders tried to make sure we did more than trail rides everyday to help teach the girls more horsemanship. We practiced trailer-loading the horses and arena work; we took the mustangs out of their pastures and took them on a walk, and we even rode in the horse trailer ourselves to see what it was like to be a horse!
The week was very humbling for me, as I was not up to speed on saddling and would have to ask some of the girls to help me before we would leave for rides. Because of this I felt like less of a leader, but I accepted by the end of the week that I couldn’t know everything; I needed to give myself some grace for being gone for three years. It actually ended up helping me connect with some of the girls as they felt, I believe on some level, that we were more of equals and could turn to me and talk easily with me. It truly was an amazing week for me. The expectations I had going into the trip were torn down, and I was given some amazing experiences. I am excited for when we can move back to Washington, and I can learn more about leadership and build more relationships with students.
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Grace Baptist Salmon
It was refreshing being at Stonewater and getting to see everyone again and to catch up with them a bit. I was able to help lead a 6-day white-water rafting trip down the Salmon River. We had a fantastic team of full-time staff and volunteers leading this trip. I was super excited to be able to do this trip with them, as well as meet a group that has been doing trips with YD a long time. I had heard many stories about Grace Baptist, so even though I had never done a trip with them, I felt like I already knew them a bit.
We had a mix of teens and young adults as well as their leaders. Some of the younger teens had just joined the youth group and some of the young adults had been out of the group for a bit, so there was some dynamic of them not really knowing each other. It was cool to see, as the trip progressed, different people coming out of their shells and really engaging with the group. It was also neat just seeing them bond as a group. This group was a ton fun to be with—from constant water fighting and trying to pull people into the river, to playing games once we made it to our beach for the day, to being able to dig into God’s word together.
Pastor Bill from Grace lead morning devotional times looking at the life of Abraham and answering the question “How big is your God?” We looked into how God brings us to the end of our strength, how our unbelief stems from a human perspective that leaves God out, that the Lord confronts our unbelief so that we see things from His perspective, and that when we trust Him to do the humanly impossible, He rewards us—not necessarily in physical ways—helping us to grow in our understanding and awe of Him.
Each evening one of the YD staff also lead a short devotional time. I was able to share with them our fourth evening. I wanted to facilitate a time of self-reflection but also to encourage group bonding. I had them grab a rock and told them that the rock represented a burden they were currently carrying. We had to carry our rock through dinner, and if we set it down, we needed to get a bigger one. After dinner and carrying our rock burdens for a bit, we looked into the burden Abraham had to carry when God told him to sacrifice Isaac. I shared how this was a foreshadowing of Christ coming and being the Lamb of God that was sacrificed for our sins. We talked about how He came to die and to take our burdens from us if we would let Him. I then tied it back into the question we had been studying, “How big is our God?” and also “Is this burden you are carrying too hard for Him to handle?” I encouraged them as we broke up into small groups to share their burdens with their group, because we aren’t intended to go through these things alone. It was amazing to join in a small group and to hear what these teens and young adults were going through—from college coming up, to feeling like they always had to please others, to having to deal with the grief of losing a mother 4 years before. After the five of us in my group all shared, we spent some time praying for each other. We then symbolically released our burdens by throwing our rocks into the river. It was a blessing seeing God work and humbling that he would allow me to be part of His working.
There were so many other things I could write about…thunderstorms…seeing river otters...and singing hymns as we floated down the river. I hope to be able to see these guys again and to help lead another adventure with them. Being able to be on this trip with Grace Baptist was encouraging to me and has given me a little added boost to the fund-raising process.
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Prayer Requests
We are currently at 35% support raised with our move date set as April 23rd.
- Please continue to pray for us as we set up meetings, ask for people to partner with us, and continue to follow where Christ leads.
- Please also pray for us as we help minister to the youth at Cornerstone Youth Center in Elizabethtown.
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Thank you for your prayers! Feel free to send me your own prayer requests as well.
With joy,
David and Jena Longenecker
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