Global Warming Helping Church Youth Groups Spend More Time at the Beaches

Destin, Fl - While the idea of "global warming" usually carries with it a negative connotation for most people, for the youth group of New Hope Unity Fellowship of Destin, it means "fun in the sun." With winter temperatures being well above normal in the Florida panhandle area over the past few years, church youth groups from around the south have been taking advantage of the warmer temps to start their usual summer activities several months earlier.

"While it normally stays rather mild here during the winter, the past few years have been particularly warm" said New Hope's youth pastor, Chris Fountain. "We've been hitting temps in the mid to upper 80's even in January and December, and that makes for a really nice day at the beach for our kids."

So this year for their winter youth retreat, instead of heading to West Virginia for a ski trip, New Hope just headed down to the beach with their kids. The subject of this year's retreat, "Christian Modesty."

"We had a great week down there at the beach" said Fountain. "Covering a subject like modesty takes a lot of careful planning. We try to stress it amongst our teenagers, especially when we take trips to the beach. We require all of the girls' swimsuits to be at least modest two-piece outfits. The guys, of course, just wear swim trunks. And there can be no hand holding while on the beaches, that's important too."

Fountain's group rented a beach house for the week of their retreat. Each day was filled with a combination of Bible study and "fun" activities.

"I spent a lot of time talking just with the guys" said Fountain. "I told them 'Hey guys, I know it's hard, but just don't look. You got to just turn your head when those girls are out there running around in front of you on the beach.' I know it's tough for them, but I think they're getting it. I also told them that they need to talk with these girls. These girls need to know if they're doing anything to cause their brothers to stumble. And I was so proud of my guys. Later in the week I saw them really spending some time talking to the girls, especially out on the beach during the day. Here they were using up their free time to have some serious spiritual conversation with these girls and let them know how they felt."

So for now, "global warming" is a welcome development amongst the New Hope Youth Group. A number of the teens have expressed their enthusiasm about returning to the beach multiple times during 2008.

"Yeah, we really want to come back again for Spring Break" said 10th-grader Derek Coleman. "I really liked having those spiritual conversations on the beach. Yeah, that was fun."

"It's their call" said Fountain. "We can go other places if they want, but if they like staying right here around town then that's fine with me. I thought the time was really beneficial."

Vegan Missionaries Find Certain Fields "Tough"

Dallas, Texas - Dellia Love is a vegan, a "raw vegan" to be precise. The word "vegan", which is taken from from the first and last syllables of the word "vegetarian" is a form of vegetarianism but differs in that vegans eat no animal by-products whatsoever. So as a vegan, Love not only refrains from eating any form of meat, but also from eating anything that comes from any living creature including milk and eggs. Furthermore as a "raw vegan" Love also does not eat any food that has been cooked above a temperature of 40 degrees Celsius. So with such a strict diet, Love decided that the perfect way to spend her summer was on a missions trip to "the middle of nowhere."

After examining a number of different summer trips with different organizations, Love chose Mongolia for its "exotic flair."

"I was looking around on the internet at 3 in the morning and got really interested in Mongolia" said Love. "I thought, 'yeah Mongolia, it's so weird.' I just knew that's where I was like being called and stuff, yeah Mongolia, it's so exotic."

So Love proceeded to contact the mission agency offering the trip, filled out the required paperwork and raised her support to go. All seemed to be going well until, though, she arrived in Mongolia.

The team flew into the capital city of Ulaanbaatar and from there drove three hours to the remote village of Baala where the group stayed at the house of a small family of Christian believers.

"We were all starving when we arrived" said Love. "We hadn't eaten since the plane ride. The lady and the man whose names I can't remember, immediately started fixing us some food for dinner."

As it turns out the simple village family dutifully started preparing a small feast for their guests. The husband, whose name is Baat, began by slaughtering a goat and roasting it over a fire. He then proceeded to walk down to a small stream and catch five fish which he cleaned and cut into small raw pieces. In the meantime Oyon, his wife, went out to their chicken coop, killed three chickens, plucked them and began cooking them as she gathered several eggs to bake bread. Amazingly, within just about 1 hour the group sat down to a feast of goat, raw fish, chicken, bread, goat tongue, congealed and seasoned pig fat, boiled horse intestine and caviar. To wash it all down Oyon produced a Mongolian treat called Kymus, fermented mare's milk. While the other team members graciously began to eat what had been set before them, Love found herself in a bit of a dilemma.

"There wasn't a thing on the table that I could eat" said a frustrated Love. "They kept putting food in front of me, but I kept trying to tell them that I was a vegan. I pointed to the food and said it really loudly and slowly 'vegan, veee-gaaan' but they didn't seem to understand. They just kept encouraging me to eat."

Love's lack of Mongolian language skills coupled with the families lack of English language skills provided the perfect environment for a cultural misunderstanding to take place. And before long the Mongolian family had come to understand that "vegan" meant "sick" and quickly began to set out to find a remedy for their guest's illness.

Oyon left the table for a moment and returned with what appeared to be two recently severed chicken's feet. She then dipped the feet into some of the congealed pig's fat and took Love to a back room where she proceeded to try to spread the substance on her ears in an effort to remedy her sickness.

"I didn't know what this lady was doing" said Love. "She just kept trying to rub pig fat all over me with chicken feet."

Love resisted and "remedy" after "remedy" was presented to her. The family tried to get her to soak her feet in some of the kymus, all the while saying "vee-gaan, vee-gaan." They then attempted to get her to wrap up her throat with a rag soaked in a mixture of milk, egg and horse intestine oil.

As the evening wore on the situation became more and more frustrating for Love and her hosts. In the end, Love prevailed in resisting the "treatments" and dinner also. Still hungry, she managed to find a head of cabbage and finished it off before going to bed. Love spent the next two months in Mongolia living off of cabbage and raw potatoes.

"It was a miserable experience" said Love. "I'll never do it again. These people are barbaric. They don't eat any tofu or soy or anything. It's all just meat and dairy stuff."

Despite the bad experience, Love still has plans to keep trying at different mission fields.

"I'm not going back to Mongolia, I can tell you that for sure, but I'm seriously looking at some remote parts of Africa for next summer."