Somehow, I was appointed the official person to look for round-trip plane tickets, no more than $250.00. My reports were not good, so we had to resort to finding another destination that we could all afford. Mike, our youth director told us to figure out a good time for everyone to meet so we could discuss our plan. We decided on meeting before church one Sunday night. Sitting in one of the empty rooms of the church building, I was early for our meeting, and ended up waiting for about twenty minutes for the other six to arrive. I was quite irritated when they got there. After everyone had arrived, we started brainstorming about different destinations for our trip.

“Man, it’s hot in here,” Callie said.

Suddenly, as if a light bulb went off in her head, she exclaimed, “Hey, why don’t we go to a water park!”

The concert she was talking about, CreationFest, is an annual event, held in a field, deep in the Pennsylvania countryside. Being a Christian concert, many different praise and worship bands were featured, along with an array of famous Contemporary Christian artists.

“Do you want the good news or the bad news first?” he asked.

On June 26, 2002, the seven of us boarded a plane in Jackson, Mississippi, and arrived in Baltimore, Maryland. We rented a van, and drove to the beautiful site among Pennsylvania's Allegheny Mountain ranges. At the base of a three hundred foot mountain was a natural amphitheater, which was used for the main stage area, where most of the concert took place. A forest trail wound to a peak of this mountain which provided an overview of the valley below. The campground was spread over several hundred acres of land. Much of the land was forest with the remaining acreage making up gently rolling grasslands.

“We might get to meet Toby Mac!” Becky said, with passion in her voice.

“Then what’s the bad news?” Chris asked.

We made it back to Mt. Union just in time to see Jennifer Knapp and the Newsboys perform. Mike and myself were the only ones who wanted to see the Newsboys, so the other five went to play on some of the inflatable games they had set up for the day. After the concert was over and we had met in our appointed spot, we discovered that Callie had sprung her ankle while wrestling with Caleb. We all helped her hobble along to the van, and then we drove five hours to try to get as close as we could to Washington to go to the museum the next morning. We stumbled sleepily into our hotel rooms at 3:00 in the morning, and set our alarm clocks for 9AM.

Some topics in this essay:
Allegheny Mountain, , Washington DC, Knapp Newsboys, Callie Suddenly, Toby Mac’s, Holocaust Museum, White House, Mike Manager, Mac” Becky, press passes, left trip, holocaust museum, day concert, van drove, started brainstorming, press conference,