Searching for a lost friend...

Well, I'm back from rugby/adventure camp after 10 days in the woods, primitive tent camping. It was great, despite being exhausting/draining. The kids all had fun and God continued to teach me and refine my character through it. I've got a lot to share, but it'd take way too long for 1 post. So, instead I'll share one interesting highlight for now.

On the last day of camp I missed out on saying goodbye to the kids and being part of the final camp picture. Why? Because my friend Tanya was lost in the woods and I with another friend were looking for her.

Tanya left camp alone around 10 AM searching for berries in the forest. A little after 11 AM, she called my mobile to tell me that she was lost and to ask for prayer while she tried to remember which direction she had come from in order to get back to camp. After some discussion, Alyosha and I along with Yuri (who knows the woods very well) headed off to find her. One of the kids from camp tagged along with us.

Now, you might not know that earlier I was on a Search & Rescue (SAR) team for several years. So, as soon as my friend called, I began to think back to that time and of what was best to do in this situation. Since she had been gone for about an hour, she could easily be anywhere within a 6 km radius from the camp. Thankfully, she was on one of the many dirt tracks (roads) within the forest, so that limited the area. However, there are a lot of those roads, intersecting each other and winding around in the forest, so it wasn't going to be easy to find her - and she's not one to stay put.

As we walked, we blew a whistle and called out on a megaphone, but didn't hear any response. I kept an eye out for her red jacket and looked for footprints. Yuri thought I was crazy and made fun of me when I insisted on checking out fresh tracks (footprints) a few times. Since it was a very sandy road, it was easy to tell that they were very fresh tracks, only a few hours old at most. Knowing how fast Tanya can walk, knowing that she wasn't likely to stay put even though we told her to, and knowing that if we found her tracks we could easily find her, I just kept looking for her tracks and kept my mouth shut while Yuri rapidly walked all over whatever prints were on the road before I could check them out, leading us in various directions without any apparent reason to which path he took, which of course, frustrated me to no end (as it turned out, the direction in which he lead us was the opposite of the way Tanya had gone so we'd not have found her using his method).

A little before noon, we came to a road junction and I found a well-preserved track that the was the right size and type to match Tanya's shoe, heading in the opposite direction of the one Yuri wanted to take. But, we couldn't call her to confirm the tread pattern b/c we had no signal in the woods. So, with more laughter at my expense for studying footprints, Yuri headed off at a rapid clip in the opposite direction of the one the print was pointing, again carelessly erasing prints on the road ahead of him, much to my chagrin.

Along the way, we met up w/ a horse and cart going in the direction of the prints and that made me even more anxious to get back before the cart destroyed them. Now, the kids were supposed to leave camp at about 1 PM and just at this time we realized that we needed to get the kid that came w/ us back to camp ASAP. So providentially, Yuri left us and headed back with the kid to camp, leaving us to continue searching w/o him.

Alyosha and I hurried back to where I had seen the shoe print, praying that it hadn't been destroyed by the horse and cart. Meanwhile, we were able to get enough of a signal to call Tanya and find out exactly what kind of shoes she was wearing. It was a perfect match! When we got back to the shoe print it was still there (praise God) and I measured it and the stride w/ a stick so that we'd be able to find and confirm prints as we tracked her.

We followed the prints and each time we came to a road junction (which was more frequent than desirable), we searched each of the roads leading away from the junction for prints until we found hers again, always being careful to walk where the prints weren't so that we wouldn't erase them, and looking for prints leading in the opposite direction in case she'd doubled-back at some point. Each time we came to one of these road junctions, we prayed for God to show us her prints on the other side of the junction and He did!

After more than an hour of prayerfully and carefully following her prints, we finally found her. She jumped for joy and screamed from excitement at being found after being lost in the woods for about 3 and 1/2 hours. It took us another 40 minutes to get back to camp w/ her b/c we went the long way so as not to get lost ourselves.

In this situation, I was thankful for the SAR training I'd received and that God brought to mind what I needed to remember in time of need. We were thankful that God showed us Tanya's prints each time they faded out when the road was too hard or grassy to see them or when there was a road junction. He also preserved her prints despite the horse and cart and Yuri erasing prints on the road...

So in the end, despite missing out on the goodbyes and the final camp picture, I'm glad that I was allowed to find Tanya and that God showed me her footprints when we needed to find them. It wasn't anything special or extraordinary, but just part of what I used to do earlier that turned out to be NOT a waste of time for what I'm doing now.

God always knows what He's doing. Even when things don't seem to fit (like me doing SAR for so many years and ending up in sports ministry), they are a necessary part of the picture God is creating in each of our lives. Had I not done SAR, I wouldn't have had the experience to know how to do ropes course stuff (which we use in almost every camp we have - low and high ropes elements) or to track my friend's footprints when she was lost. So, one lesson from this camp, among many, is to realize that what one did earlier was not a waste of time. God can use any and all experiences in our lives to shape us to be a better person and to help us be better equipped for whatever we do in the future.