A weekend of disasters

I'm part of the Morning Star crew. I go up on weekends to take care of teams that want to come for a night or two on board. This includes cooking and taking care of the basic needs.

This time was no different except that our team was a group of 20 teenagers and Neil, their youth group leader. Piece of cake, right? Except for one little detail... the boat is made to cater to groups no bigger than 16 people... including the crew. In this instance we had 24 people including crew... as you can imagine that might create certain... challenges. The first is getting such a large team up to the boat. Everything was organized. We were going to load everybody up into three vans. Jed was supposed to drive a van we've lovingly dubbed the 'Brown Bomber' while I was supposed to drive HM's van and Neil would drive his. So far so good...

The day started off great. I got all my work done and left the office in good time to make it to the Bible School by 17:00, which was our meeting point. As I drove into the parking lot I noticed that the HM van was nowhere to be seen. This didn't worry me at first as the 'Brown Bomber' was there and no Jed so I just assumed that Jed was on his way with the other van. 17:15 and Jed was still not there. As I was about to call him one of the kids told me that he was inside. Now I was worried. Jed came out and looked utterly bewildered at the fact that I didn't have the HM van o.O uuuuhhhh What?!?!?! Since Andrew was supposed to have made sure the van was there, I called him. When I told him what was going on all I could hear was silence and then an "Oh shoot!" A few phone calls later we found out that the van was actually at Alex's. So we piled everybody into the two available vans and my car and drove up there. We switched cars and everything was great again.

We all left in convoy, Neil at the head followed by Jed and then me. At a t-junction Neil turned left but Jed having arrived moments later turned right! And since I was following Jed I turned right. As we arrived at the bottom of a hill Jed called me and told me he had no idea where Neil was and which way to go. So we called Neil and found out that he was back at Alex's and waiting for us there! He'd realized he lost us and turned back. Well, we had a slight detour to make as the street we were on didn't allow for any left- or U-turns. We were forced to drive down a ways before we could turn back. 15min later we got back to Alex's. At this point we were an hour behind schedule, not great since we like being on time. We drove down some back roads and picked up another kid at a fuel station. Finally we were on the road! An hour and a half behind schedule! Oh well.

We got to the boat and while Andrew and Jed were getting the team settled I started cooking. Jed had done the shopping and told me that I was to make hot dogs and french fries... except he had forgotten the fries. No problem! We had a whole bunch of instant mash potatoes on board and so I just planned on cooking that instead. As I was poring the powder into the boiling water I noticed something crawling around in it. There were bugs in our instant mash!!! Shoot! That went overboard! Upon inquiry Jed told me that there wasn't supposed to be any salad with this meal. So I had no salad, no fries, no mashed potatoes and 20 hungry teenagers with only two hot dogs per person. Andrew and I looked at each other and said, 'pop corn!' So that's what we did. We served hot dogs with pop corn. The kids had a field day with it. They were putting them in their buns and just really enjoyed themselves. Few! Saved. After dinner, when I finally got to my stuff and found the menu I realized that I was supposed to have made a salad with the meal!!!! Which, as Andrew said, would have made it a meal! What else could go wrong???

After dinner the team decided to go for a swim! It was 1 am, freezing cold outside, in the middle of November! They were crazy!!! Well if Neil said it was fine, it was fine with us. I boiled some water so that the kids could at least rinse off with something warm. As I was getting the bucket ready I accidentally pored boiling water on my hand... AAAHHH! The rest of my evening was spent with my hand in a bucket of cold water. Later that evening as I was trying to fall asleep my hand felt like it was on fire, quite literally. I tossed and turned till 4:30 trying to 'forget' about my hand. By the end, in total desperation and in an attempt to forget the burning sensation, I started playing video games on my cell phone. Hallelujah it worked. I finally fell asleep at around 4:45.

Breakfast was perfect. We compensated beautifully for the previous night's dinner. Neil led us in devotions and then I got started on lunch. I must admit that I'd never cooked for such a large team on board before. Cooking spaghetti for 24 people in a small kitchen is not as easy as it sounds.... I burned the pasta. Who burns pasta?!?!?! For crying out loud! Praise the Lord we had a second team coming the next day and Jed had done shopping for both teams at the same time. I grabbed the next day's pasta and cooked that instead... in two pots. Needless to say lunch was an hour late. LOL! Praise the Lord, this was the last thing that went wrong as we left an hour later... LOL

So we all messed up at some point that weekend but as a team we worked great together and kept things together. We had a blast and in the end we have a great story to tell! :D If you actually read the entire story, I'm impressed and hope you enjoyed it :o)