Lost and Lost and Found

I didn't end up finding my way to work today till about 3:15pm. It was wonderful. I got to sleep in and mooch around the house, stuff up the website, and hang out with Ryan and Jem. Nice.

Tonight I went on a race with the junior half of the youth group. It was rather fun. They were given a location many kilometers away to get to and a series of tasks to complete along the way. They got points for the tasks and lots of points for getting to the location first. They had to read a street directory and guide their driver the whole way. It was fun, although people in year 6 and 7 find navigation rather difficult I have discovered.

We arrived at our location (West Ryde Maccas) but one of the other cars failed to materialise. I called the driver but there was no answer. I called again, no answer. I called every 5 minutes. No answer.

It was a little worrying. I had vision that they'd gotten so lost they crashed their car into a ditch or in to a tree in some deserted wasteland near Sydney and there was this lonely mobile ringing in a car full of dead or unconcious young people. Or perhaps they were in an ambulance being transported to hospital and the ambulance man was ignoring the mobile because he was doing cpr or something.

In the end we had to leave McDonald's and just hope they'd headed back to church. I drove back wondering how to explain to a bunch of parents that their children have disappeared and we have no idea where they disappeared to.

When we got back to church the car wasn't there either. All the young guys jumped out of the cars and ran to their parents to say "We won" and "We lost a whole car". It makes you feel like a competant youth minister.

But finally the missing car turned up full of happy girls. They had gotten very lost and the leader had left her phone at home. Happily no one was dead. But needless to say, they lost the race.