(the following article appears in the April, 2005 edition of the Hinton Herald, announcing our youth group's summer mission trip)

New York, New York!!
By David Vaughan

Previous youth mission trips have taken us to the foothills of western Pennsylvania and the beaches of south Florida. We’ve traveled by van and by plane, down the world’s steepest vehicular incline plane and through the swamps of the Everglades National Park. Our projects have included sheet rocking a house, leading a children’s day camp, serving hot meals at a soup kitchen, and putting together care packages for a food pantry. Most importantly, these journeys have given us the opportunity to grow closer to God and closer to one another as a faith community.

This year’s trip promises these same gifts, as well as some new adventures and challenges. On Saturday, July 16, youth and adult chaperones from Hinton Avenue will leave our church for the Niagara Frontier District of the United Methodist Church’s Western New York Conference. Spending the majority of our time in and around Buffalo, we’ll lead Vacation Bible School for 50-100 children at an impoverished inner-city mission church, help the district launch a new missional gleaning program in its rural areas, and once again prepare and serve meals at local hunger ministries. Our trip will also include expeditions to area parks, museums, art galleries, and other attractions, and we’ll cap off the week with an unforgettable day trip to Niagara Falls and Toronto!

Bake sales, car washes, and other fundraisers are planned to help us make this trip possible. The largest fundraiser will once again be our late summer Celebration Dinner. Members of our team will be selling tickets to their friends, neighbors, teachers, and co-workers, but we especially hope that you will be able to join us for this memorable and inspiring evening. After a great, home-cooked meal, we’ll share with you the pictures and stories and testimonies of all that God has done for us during our time in New York. The tickets themselves are $25, but we welcome any support you can offer us. Your prayers, encouragement, and gifts make these mission experiences possible, and we are deeply grateful for the faith and love you show us each year.

All youth (grades 6-12) are invited to participate in this fun and transforming trip. If you have any questions, or would like to know how you can help bring this dream to life, please feel free to contact me at 555-5555 or vaughan@virginia.edu.

Many, many blessings!

Mission Trip Details:
Dates: July 16-23, 2005
Location: Niagara Frontier District (Buffalo, NY)
Primary Mission Project: Vacation Bible School Leaders, Seneca UMC
The Neighborhood: Seneca Babcock neighborhood of Buffalo
--very poor, predominantly white community of ~1300 people
--physical barriers (highways and a river) on all sides make it a very close community
--Seneca UMC is a mission church which provides only 15% of its own operating costs and relies on gifts and volunteers from other churches to minister to the community
Host Church: Kenmore United Methodist Church (www.kenmoreumc.com)
Registration Deadline: Sunday, May 8
For Information: Contact David Vaughan (555-5555)

The Plunge is Wintergreen Ski Resort's 10-lane, 900-foot snowtubing hill, which catapults riders down the mountain at speeds approaching 40 mph. After worship on Sunday, March 13, the UMYF will provide lunch in the fellowship hall and then we will travel together to Wintergreen to experience these thrills. If you're feeling brave, please join us for this exciting adventure! Registration forms are available outside the church office; the cost for the day is $22. If you are planning to attend, you MUST return these forms by noon on Friday!

This is the announcement that has appeared in our weekly Youth Happenings newsletter for the past month or so. It is also why I'm convinced that I have the best, most blessed job in the entire world. Not the announcement, that is, or The Plunge itself, but Sunday's journey and all the elements of youth ministry it embodied.

We had originally scheduled the trip for late January, as a way of celebrating after our Youth Sunday service, but (ironically enough) we had to cancel because of a snowstorm. As it turns out, that was a great stroke of luck, allowing us to go instead in mid-March when the lines were short and the weather was terrific. Because we were so late in the season, the folks at Wintergreen gave us a great group rate (usually unavailable on weekends) and even invited us to hang around and continue tubing after our 4-6pm reservations.

Attendance for the event was so great that we had to scramble around on Sunday morning to make sure we could accommodate all the chaperones and youth and guests who wanted to be a part of the excitement. April graciously helped coordinate the lunch after church, which itself served as a great way of bringing the new folks into the life of the group and preparing us all to spend the day together. Despite an unplanned panic attack or two (careening down the mountain on a rubber tube can be somewhat stressful, after all), we had a truly wonderful afternoon at Wintergreen. Jeremy discovered how to kick as much snow as possible onto his fellow tubers, Wills and Caitlyn both creamed me in downhill races, J.C. managed to do the worm on the escalator, and Ashley lost her boot halfway down the hill, among other great moments. Hopefully, I'll have some pictures up soon to document some of the craziness.

For me, the van rides to and from Wintergreen were actually as refreshing and enjoyable as the tubing itself. Perhaps the best parts of being a youth minister are the time you get to spend and the conversations you get to have with brilliant, passionate, life-giving young people. For whatever reason, these conversations never seem livelier, or holier, than when they happen in our rickety old church van. On Sunday, I talked guitars with Lin, UVA basketball with Rose, cool names with Taber and Mary, and ideal behavior with our model youth group member, Savannah. When we weren't guessing what the folks in the other van were talking about or clearing up any doubts people might have about the Trinity, Meredith was ambitiously trying to guess our summer mission trip destination (just so you'll know, we're going to-----ah, you thought I was going to let it slip, didn't you?).

We were pretty hungry by the time we got back to the church, and since we weren't having our usual youth group dinner, a few of us got to make a special expedition to the Little John's. Enjoying a Wild Turkey and re-watching the film from Sunday School in the youth room, I knew that life couldn't get much better. I have much to be grateful for, and the relationships I'm blessed to have with so many of our great youth are definitely high on the list. Snowtubing trips may not save the world in the way discipleship groups and missions immersions and Lenten fasts do, but this one drew us closer to one another and to God. And in that way, I think it models the very best of what we're about in youth ministry at Hinton Avenue.

In other exciting news from the weekend, the blogging wave that hit the Wesley Foundation a year or so ago appears to have reached the youth group as well. Mine is the topic of frequent references and jokes, and now Meredith and Jeremy have both entered the community. It's likely that they'll be much more regular posters than I am, and that they will offer better reflections on youth group activities, so you'll want to check in with them often. Isaac and I are also starting work on the youth group website, which will hopefully be up by the summer and provide a helpful forum where we can share the stories and pictures and dreams that make us who we are.

Stay tuned, and keep the faith. Deo gratias!

When the spring semester of my first year at UVA began, I had become friends with quite a lot of my hallmates and classmates and fellow students. I was deeply (and wonderfully) connected to random groups of people from Robinson High School (not my own), Bonnycastle Dorm (also not mine), First Year Council, and the Wesley Foundation. If anything, in fact, I was beginning to feel over-committed and stretched a little too thin by the new relationships and responsibilities I had discovered at the University. But I also had the peculiar feeling that there was something slightly amiss, something a little shallow or superficial, about too many of these relationships.

When Brian Lee stumbled into the Wesley Foundation dining room one Thursday evening, the unexpected recipient of a Spring Activities Fair invitation from two people of profound faith and grace, I knew for certain that I had met a true friend. That night, we walked back to Grounds together, thinking aloud together about faith and philosophy and love and life. He taught me what he knew about the Gnostic Gospels (especially kickass stories about Jesus zapping people with laser beams as a child), and I loaned him a Bible with the stories I knew of God. Like me, he was a curious explorer, searching for meaning and romance and recognizing the world as full of possibility. And somehow I knew that this would not be one of those typical college conversations, fiery and ambitious and even transformative in their way, but ultimately fleeting and unfulfilling.

And indeed, over the next three years, our paths would intersect and support one another in countless ways. We did homework together and instituted the tradition of second dinner in the Moosetrap dining room. We attended human rights courses and Disciple Bible studies together. I was present when, perhaps grudgingly, he took on the famous nickname of 'Gampy' at a retreat in Colonial Heights. I experienced Lent and Easter in the most powerful ways imaginable as we prepared for his baptism in the spring of 2003. When I came home suddenly infatuated with a new girl or seminary or Jewish pragmatic thinker, he may have found it crazy and laughable, but he offered me encouragement anyway. When our youth group was raising money for our summer mission trip (and any other time I needed support, no matter what other things he had to do), he offered to drop everything and help. He introduced me to Bruce Lee and the ins and outs of blogging. Together we made pilgrimage to Washington, DC to see Simon & Garfunkel and to the Charlottesville Performing Arts Center for an evening with the Indigo Girls. And when he graduated from the Foundation and the University, I had the great privilege of offering a reflection at Wesley Memorial's Baccalaureatte Service.

Brian has a clearer sense of duty and calling than anyone I know. And even when he had serious doubts about whether or not he would survive the application process and become a Peace Corps volunteer, I knew he would. On the journey of life, just like he was a follower of Christ long before he knew it, he was also bound to help communities in rural Haiti identify and maintain sources of clean water before he ever had the language or skills to make that leap. Where else could the man who used to quote ancient Chinese wisdom (or lines from 'The Far Side') to me while standing in my doorway eating a chicken leg and a protein shake end up than in the land that gave us the inspiring proverbs, "Spread piss doesn't foam" (he will, after all, be digging latrines as part of his duties) and "Beyond the mountain is another mountain"? How could a man brave enough to explore Christianity in college and life as a high school astronomy teacher after graduation not enter a dangerous place and do his part to make it a sanctuary?

Thankfully, I've had two wonderful opportunities to send Brian off properly over the past couple weeks. On February 12, Caroline threw him a huge surprise party at her house in northern Virginia. She teamed up with his folks and did a great job of contacting so many of his friends and family members and getting them all there without having him catch on. As soon as we knew that our shouts of greeting had not been too much for his heart, we had a fine time sharing old stories and looking ahead to all the great things he'll be doing during the next two years. On the way home that night, April, Andrew, Eddie and I decided that this must have been a glimpse of the kingdom of God. Heaven, for us, is bringing together generations of Wesley Foundation alums, friends, and family and offering blessings on the journey of a good friend. Heaven is a surprise party for Brian Lee.

A couple weeks later, he came down on a Sunday night to talk to our youth group about Haiti and the Peace Corps and what sorts of experiences he's expecting during his tour. I was deeply grateful for his thoughtful and thought-provoking presentation (which actually inspired at least a couple of our youth to begin wondering what a life of service might look like for them), but mostly I valued the time and conversation we shared before and after the group's meeting. Sitting on couches in the Dwelling living room (a place as holy as any I know), we talked about everything and nothing and found peace. Andrew and Jimbo came by. Sasha and Will were there. It was goodbye done right. And I wouldn't trade it for the world.

While Brian's gone, I'll send him books and letters. I'll pray for him everyday. I'll bring him back for my wedding (someone's got to cook for the pot luck reception, right?). I'll remember that I've learned much about myself and my God from him. And I'll have great, great hope for the Creation he's helping to repair.

Thanks be to God!