God is in Cervinia

Got back late Saturday night after seven days in Italy. The trip was tough on many levels but perhaps the most personally satisfying too. We were hit with a lot of set-backs. Back home Hailey, watched Eoin contract a muscle virus (giving him sore legs) along with scarlet fever (again!) and Moia battled a head and chest cold giving them all many sleepless nights. In Cervinia we had injury after injury - one student sprained their wrist, another tore his ligament, one knocked himself out cold, another found it hard to walk after he popped his hip and yet another found it hard to sit after severely bruising his tail bone. Perhaps the crescendo was when the rescue helicopter had to be called in to save two of our students from falling into a large crevasse in which someone had died just 30 minutes earlier. They hung on to ice for 20 minutes before being rescued.

Midway through the trip Cormac and I looked at each other and asked, "Can we afford to do these trips?" By the end of that night our question was "Can we afford to not do these trips?" So many of these university students have questions, deep questions, life questions. Our theme was "living life to the full," and we looked at the many ways Jesus reorients our life not so he can rule us like a tyrant but so that we can become our true selves and join him in his plan of world reconciliation. We were reminded that these lads don't often get to wrestle with the deep questions of life. Like many of us, it's not often that they stop and ask why they're living their lives they way they do.

It was such a blessing to be able to hang with guys who have become good friends and meet others for the first time. It was encouraging to see some of the lads desire to pursue God more for the first time. It was good to know that even with all the hard times this trip endured we could say at the end, "God is in Cervinia."

A few pictures from the trip.

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