April 18-22, 1998. Another disappointing Spring Picnic, and upcoming changes. (#170)

Author’s note: My birthday is this week in real life :)

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“Greg!” I heard an enthusiastic male voice say as I stood outside the sanctuary at Jeromeville Covenant Church, looking for someone to talk to after church got out.  The voice belonged to Darius Curtis, who was quickly becoming a familiar face in my social circles.

Unlike most of the regulars at the college-age group at J-Cov, Darius was not a student at the University of Jeromeville.  He was not taking classes at all right now.  Until a couple months ago, Darius was living with his parents in a rural area outside of San Diego.  He had recently found Jesus and wanted to get away from his old lifestyle of excessive drinking and partying, so he started looking at options for new surroundings.  He moved to Jeromeville, five hundred miles from where he was before, because his older sister Krista lived here and was well-connected at her church.

Krista was not much older than Darius; the two were only seventeen months apart.  I had been friends with Krista for three and a half years, since we were in the same dorm as freshmen at UJ, and her church was my church, so I was becoming friends with Darius as well.  Darius was one of those friendly people who naturally drew others to himself, and being involved with church was the perfect environment for Darius to build a new, more positive social circle.

“Hey, Darius, what’s up?” I asked, turning to face him.

“Krista brought me to the Spring Picnic yesterday.  It was so much fun!  Were you there?”

“I was.  My parents came up for it too.”

“That’s awesome!  Did they like it?”

“Hard to tell.  Nothing against them, but it was kind of stressful having them around.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” Darius said.  “Family can be stressful.”

“I just like wandering around at the Spring Picnic,” I explained.  “And I felt like they were getting bored with that.  And I wasn’t sure what to show them.”

“Did you see the dachshund races?  That was so cool!  I think that was my favorite part.”

“We didn’t.  We spent two hours at the track waiting to watch my cousin; he’s on the track team for North Coast State.  My aunt and uncle have a dachshund, and they said it would be fun to enter him in the races next year.  If you ask me, though, I don’t see their old, slow dog as the type to win a competition.”  Darius laughed as I continued.  “I wish I had known exactly what time my cousin’s races were, so I could have just watched him instead of spending two hours being bored watching people I didn’t know race.”

“Yeah.  That makes sense.  Good that you got to see family, though.”

“That’s true.”

“What are you doing today?” Darius asked.

“I have homework and studying to catch up on.  I didn’t get to do anything this weekend yet.”

“Yeah.  Good luck with that.  I’ll see you next week?”

“Definitely.”

The Spring Picnic was an annual festival on campus at the University of Jeromeville, an open house for the university featuring exhibits, performances, activities, and much more.  Apparently it was a big deal in the Capital Valley region, but its popularity did not extend south as far as Santa Lucia County, where I grew up, because I had never heard of it until I came to Jeromeville.  Some of my friends had their parents come up for the Spring Picnic, and when I would walk around Spring Picnic and see people  with their parents, everyone seemed to be having a good time.  So this year I invited my parents to come, and I realized fairly early on that this would make Spring Picnic significantly less enjoyable for me.

My parents and my sixteen-year-old brother Mark arrived yesterday morning around 9:30, after leaving their house before 7:00.  We got to campus before the parking lots all filled up, and I started walking toward the Quad, past where the parade participants had lined up, with the other three following me.  I stopped across the street from the Memorial Union, and the others stopped too.

“Here we are,” I said.

“Okay,” Mom replied.  All of us just kind of stared at each other, until Mom finally said, “So, what do you want to show us?”

“I don’t know.  What do you want to see?  I usually just wander around.”

“What all is there?”

“The parade will be starting soon right here,” I said.  “Let me go get a program.  There’s an information booth right there.”

I walked to the information booth and brought Mom a program.  She began looking through it as Dad and Mark found room on the curb for the four of us to sit among others who had started gathering for the parade.  “Wow, you weren’t kidding when you said there was a lot going on,” Mom said, flipping through the program.  Academic exhibits, agricultural exhibits, animal exhibits… There’s even a petting zoo.”

“An evil petting zoo?” Mark asked sarcastically, impersonating and quoting Dr. Evil from the movie Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.  I laughed and high-fived Mark; Mom and Dad, who had not seen the movie, looked confused.

About half an hour into the parade, Mark started complaining that he was bored.  We went to the math department exhibit next, since we were close to where the exhibit was set up.  Students from the Math Club were leading the same mathematical activities that they did every year.  I walked up to the display of the Monty Hall problem and explained that, when guessing which of three doors has a prize behind it, it is more advantageous to switch guesses after being shown one of the wrong doors.  The students running the exhibit kept track of whether or not people switched their guess and whether or not they won. I switched my guess but still lost. I also explained the Towers of Hanoi, the recursive algorithm to move a stack of discs from one of three towers to another without placing a larger disc on a smaller disc.  None of Mom, Dad, or Mark seemed particularly interested.

After a couple hours of wandering around aimlessly and not finding anything that the others found interesting, we had burritos from the Memorial Union Coffee House for lunch.  Mark did not like them and complained several times.  After that, we walked over to the track.  Some of the Jeromeville Colts interscholastic athletic teams have games on campus during the Spring Picnic, as part of the event. The track and field team held a meet with several other schools during the Spring Picnic.  My cousin Rick ran for North Coast State, and their team was at our meet today.  Mom had never seen Rick run, and I had only seen him run once, at this meet last year.

We had to wait at the track for over two hours in order to see Rick’s two events.  Rick’s mother, Aunt Jane, was my mother’s sister, and the two of them did a lot of their usual thing, talking about people I didn’t know.  Rick’s father, Uncle Darrell, occasionally chimed in with a sarcastic comment, and my father mostly stood quietly.  Mark complained that he was bored, and this time, I completely agreed with Mark’s complaints.

By the time Rick was done running, most of the events at the rest of the Spring Picnic had closed for the day.  The rest of the family followed me down to the grassy area in the Arboretum near Marks Hall.  The University of Jeromeville Marching Band and five other university marching bands from across the state held a Battle of the Bands here, beginning in mid-afternoon and lasting into the night.  The bands mostly played marching band arrangements of popular and contemporary songs, and Mom and I, being trivia buffs, tried to identify each song.  Mark complained a few more times about being bored.  By the time my family left Jeromeville at six o’clock, I realized that, for the second time in a row, I had been disappointed with this Spring Picnic.  This sounds mean, but I discovered that day that I would enjoy future Spring Picnics much more without my family, just wandering around campus looking at whatever I found interesting.  Others do not find this campus so inherently interesting and fascinating like I do.

The next few days were relatively routine.  I watched The X-Files with my friends at the De Anza house Sunday night.  I went to class.  I did homework.  And Wednesday night, I walked the short distance to church for The Edge, the junior high school youth group for which I was a volunteer leader.

Courtney, Brody, 3, Marlene, Taylor, Martin, and Noah were already there, and the youth pastor, Adam, was talking about a recent activity that he had chaperoned for Next Generation, the preteen youth group.  “We’re gonna get those kids in The Edge next year,” Adam said.

“Well, you will,” Marlene said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not gonna do The Edge next year.  I’m going to lead a Bible study on campus with JCF,” Marlene explained.

“Oh,” Adam replied, sounding surprised, as if this was the first he had heard of this.

“Me too,” 3 added.

“And I’m doing one off campus,” Courtney said.  I knew this, because Courtney and her co-leader, Colin Bowman, had already asked me to be in their Bible study next year.  Judging from Adam’s reaction, though, this was the first he had heard of any of this.

“Wow.  I just lost three of my leaders for next year,” Adam said.  “And Martin is moving up to do high school group instead.  We’re really going to need new leaders.  Let’s pray that God will raise up new leaders.”

Something about this whole discussion rubbed me the wrong way.  I like Marlene and 3, I was enjoying having them on the Edge staff with me, and I thought of Courtney as one of my best friends by now.  And none of them would not be around next year.  Of course, I would still see them next year at Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, and around campus, and at church on Sundays.  But I felt a little bit closer to most of the Edge staff, since we were a small and relatively tight-knit group, and I wanted our group to stay together.

A couple hours later, after youth group ended, the leaders were putting things away, and all of this was still on my mind.  The three leaders who were leaving would be leading Bible studies with JCF next year, and although I had been part of JCF for two years now, I did not always approve of the way they did things.  I was not questioning their Biblical foundation, but too many of their ministries operated around cliques and fads.  All the cool kids who were currently freshmen would be leading Bible studies sophomore year, so Marlene and 3 had to be cool and lead a Bible study too… at least this latest turn of events came across that way to me.  It was nice that JCF would not be doing Kairos groups any more next year; those were Bible studies that were set up in a way that supposedly prepared students for leadership, but in reality perpetuated cliques.  But that also made the Kairos ministry feel like another fad that all of the JCF leaders had run to a few years ago, and were now abandoning.

“Hey, Greg,” Adam asked me.  “What’s up?”

“Not much,” I said.  “I was just thinking about everyone leaving.  I knew about Courtney, because she asked me to be in her small group next year, but I didn’t know Marlene and 3 were leaving too.  I like our staff group this year, and I wish we could stay together for next year.”

“I know what you mean.  On one hand, maybe you’ll end up getting along great with next year’s leaders too.  But Marlene and 3 and Courtney are already involved in ministry with us, and JCF should be encouraging students who aren’t doing anything to get involved, instead of taking students away from other ministries.  I might have to talk to the McAllens about that.”

“Exactly,” I said.  “That’s a good way to put it.  And just know that I’m probably going to be sticking with the Edge staff for as long as I’m in Jeromeville.”

“Thanks,” Adam replied.  “I appreciate having you here.”

After I got home from The Edge, I went to my room and checked my email.  Sean was not home, so I was alone in the room.  I had a message from Melody, a girl in Texas whom I had met on Internet Relay Chat a couple weeks earlier.

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From: “Melody Medlin” <mlm016@ueasttexas.edu>
To: “Gregory Dennison” <gjdennison@jeromeville.edu>
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1998 20:44 -0500
Subject: Re: hi

Hi Greg!  How was youth group?  That’s so cool that you’re a youth group leader!  I went to a church youth group when I was in high school.  It was so much fun!  I haven’t really done stuff like that since I started college, but last year when I was home for the summer, I went with my home church to a camp in Colorado for a week.  I’d never been to Colorado before, it was so beautiful!  The camp was way up in the mountains.  One day we climbed this mountain, there was a beautiful view from the top, and one of the camp counselors started singing this old hymn of praise, and when we got back to the camp, someone told the camp director about that, and he said that many years ago, the first guy who ever climbed that mountain sang that exact same song!  And none of us knew about that… weird!

What else did you do today?  How were your classes?  I still don’t understand that quarter schedule you were telling me about where you have midterms coming up, and you don’t graduate until June.  We’re starting to get ready for finals already, and school gets out in a few weeks.  Hope you had a great day!

-Mel

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I chuckled at Melody’s inability to understand the quarter system, even though I thought I had explained it clearly.  But the part about the mountain climbing intrigued me more, because I had heard the exact same story before.  Could it be that Melody was at that same camp last year?  Might I know someone else who knows Melody?  That would be a bizarre coincidence.  I clicked Reply and began typing.

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To: mlm016@ueasttexas.edu
From: gjdennison@jeromeville.edu
Subject: Re: hi

Okay, this is going to sound weird, but by any chance, was there a camp counselor there in Colorado named Adam White?  Tall skinny guy with a big toothy grin?  He’s the youth pastor at my church here in Jeromeville, and he spent last summer as a camp counselor in Colorado, and he told that exact same story about climbing the mountain and singing the same hymn as the guy who first climbed the mountain years earlier.  It was the Doxology, the one that starts “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.”  Was that the song?  Maybe the same kind of thing happened in two different places in Colorado, it’s a big state, but it sounds like you might have been at the same camp where Adam was.

The quarter schedule… the year is divided into three terms instead of two.  Late September until winter break, January through mid-March, and end of March through June.  So it really should be called trimesters instead.  Some classes last for one term, some last two, and some last the whole year.  You take finals at the end of each quarter, in December, March, and June.  The year starts and ends later so that the break for Christmas and the New Year still comes at a quarter break, but since there are three terms, that has to come at the 1/3 point of the year instead of the halfway point.  Does that help?

Youth group was fun tonight.  But I did find out that three of the leaders aren’t coming back next year.  That was a little disappointing.  I like them, and we’re a pretty close group, and I don’t want to grow apart.  I’m sticking around next year.  I’ll still be in Jeromeville; in this state, you have to do a fifth year to get a teaching certificate.  What are you up to the rest of the week?

-gjd

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I never did find out if Melody was at the same camp as Adam last year.  That would certainly be strange if she was.  We stayed in touch for several months, but she ignored that part of my email in her reply; she just talked about how the quarter system was weird and told me about her plans for the week.

I kept my informal promise to Adam and continued to work with the Edge as long as I was in Jeromeville.  However, I started to scale back my involvement in the spring of 2001.  I had already made plans to move out of Jeromeville that following summer when the Edge switched from being a weekly large group to only meeting twice a month, with leaders and students meeting in small groups on the other weeks.  Since I already knew that my time in Jeromeville would be ending soon, I asked Adam if I could only help out with the twice-monthly large groups and not take a small group, and he agreed to this.  I have never formally worked as a youth leader since then; life has just kept me busy, and I spend enough time around youth as a teacher.

I did stay close with Courtney for quite a while.  I stayed friends with Marlene and 3 for as long as we were all in Jeromeville, but I did not stay in touch with them after that.  I wondered if we would have been closer had they continued working with the Edge.  I do not know if Adam ever had a talk with the McAllens, the leaders of Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, about not taking away student leaders from other ministries, but I do not remember this being a problem in any other year.  I still have some issues with the way JCF runs things in general, to this day, but those are stories for another time.

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Readers: Have you ever been part of a group but disagreed with the way they did things sometimes? Tell me about it in the comments.

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