M3 - Merge Ministry Mostly
A behind-the-scenes look at camp and ministry leadership, told with humor and heart. This podcast offers honest conversations about Christian leadership in student and children’s ministry—sharing real wins, mistakes, growth moments, and the everyday joys and challenges of serving. With plenty of laughs and genuine passion, it’s where Christian leadership meets youth camp chaos—real, relatable, and rooted in purpose.
M3 - Merge Ministry Mostly
Moments That Made Us Laugh
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
It is not just about the destination but the journey and people along the way. Today we share some of the stories that made us laugh and continue to be shared through the years.
Today's episode is all about the moments that stick with you, the ones that made us laugh way too hard, the ones that made us proud, and the ones that turned into stories we'll be telling for years from camp and ministry. Our hope is simple that you leave this episode with a little more joy than you came with. And hey, if you end up laughing at us instead of with us, honestly, that's kind of the point. So let's get it. Welcome back to M3. I'm Daniel. And I'm Luke. If you haven't figured that out by now, we're the only two here.
SPEAKER_00So that's we also didn't do that last week. Did we? We didn't.
SPEAKER_01I don't remember. I don't remember what happened. Uh even though I edit it. So today on the podcast, we will be sharing stories through camp, funny stories, big moment stories, things that kind of stick with us, taking a little different turn. Maybe we aren't really taking a different turn. I don't think we really have a lot of flow to this anyway. We just come up with something every week to talk about. But our podcasting careers actually began when we did a pre-show together.
SPEAKER_00That was uh a very different time in the world, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, during COVID, we were serving at the same church and everything went uh video. Well, I don't know, I would say it wasn't viral, it was social media, you know, what happened during COVID. Yeah. So in order to keep people entertained, they put Luke and myself on a pre-show and told us to do a pre-show. And even in that, they didn't really tell us what to do.
SPEAKER_00There was very little direction, just like, hey, do this, do something.
SPEAKER_01We're like, does it need to tie into what we're gonna hear about and the message? And they're like, no, just whatever.
SPEAKER_00So it was it was genuinely a way for the the church body to somewhat feel engaged, you know, when everybody's at home and they're watching online, you know, people are like commenting on Facebook, and you know, we're able to interact with them in that way. Uh it was it was it was it was fun. I don't know if it was anything other than other than fun. We were just being silly and you know, did the whole little little show, which Matt was with us in the beginning. Matt was, yep. He kind of led it, and then when he left to take a church, you kind of got put in charge of it.
SPEAKER_01Soon we will have video. We have cameras that we're gonna set up and we're gonna video the podcast.
SPEAKER_00So when we do that, you'll be now you can see how dumb I look without being crazy, and we can do more stuff like we did back then that you can see.
SPEAKER_01But today we're gonna tell some stories. We're just gonna share stories of camp, maybe funny, maybe serious, maybe probably not very serious.
SPEAKER_00There will be some, but there's a lot less serious on our talking points than our uh funny.
SPEAKER_01So I'm gonna start with one that actually happened not too long ago, a few months ago. We had our planning weekend. Uh, that's when we got up to Shaco, some of the leaders to plan for this year's camp. And Luke loves mayonnaise. Hate it. If you haven't, but he hates mayonnaise, but apparently he loves butter.
SPEAKER_00I do love butter. I do love butter. So know when we were all when I was a child, I got like caught a couple times with the fridge door open, sitting on the ground with either a stick of butter or the tub, and I'm just down, baby. Wow. Now I'm a grown-up, and so you still now nobody can catch you. Well, no, I now you do what you want. It's much more frowned upon as a grown human to do that, so I don't, but the their desire might still be there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, so we were standing in the kitchen, we're all just standing around talking, and Luke was his back was to me. So I found an old pack of mayonnaise. He did not know it was mayonnaise at the time, but his old pack, like you know, when the little uh condiment packets puff up, yeah, yeah, probably something wrong with it. So being the the great human I am, I was like, Well, I know Luke don't like mayonnaise, so I'm gonna take some of it and I'm just gonna put it on his hand, like like no harm in that. I was just gonna put some on his hand.
SPEAKER_00Because as much as I hate the taste of mayonnaise, I don't like it on me either. Like when my kids will say, Can you scrape this off? I I want to tell them no, like I'm not gonna touch it. I don't like mayonnaise. I don't touch it.
SPEAKER_01His hands were on the counter and he he was not facing me, so I came up behind him and I put some mayonnaise on his hand, just thinking, oh ha ha, this is going to be funny. Well, for some reason, Luke knows the reason Luke thought it was butter. So, what does Luke do? He licks his hand, which was a horrible mistake. So, not only did he have mayonnaise on him, he is now eating mayonnaise, and it took him a few seconds to realize that it was not butter.
SPEAKER_00At first, I was like, there's no shot. Like this dude just put mayonnaise on my hand, and my dumb self put it in my mouth, and so I I froze. Like, what what do I do? And so obviously uh I ran to the sink and started gagging, tried to spit it out, and then the gagging started. And Daniel asked me, Why did you why did you lick it? Like, why would you put it in your mouth? And I was like, It looked like butter. It looks like butter, I'm probably gonna eat it.
SPEAKER_01It looks like butter.
SPEAKER_00I'm probably going to the mayonnaise was bad, it wasn't white like it's supposed to be. It was that yellowish tan color that butter looks like it wasn't normal looking mayonnaise, and it had been expired for a couple years. Probably was the packet was about to explode. That was um that's like par for the course being with Daniel. We'll see, and it's not just Daniel, I guess. Like it's it happens a lot on staff. Uh we we keep it fun, we keep it fun, keep it fun.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and we have a staff member who is notorious about being late. Always late. Always like you can tell him, hey, be here, we're leaving at 6, and he's showing up at 6 15. Hey, we're having prayer at 8 30. He shows up at 9 o'clock. One morning we decided.
SPEAKER_00It's not been one morning, it's been several mornings.
SPEAKER_01Well, the morning we decided to wake him up. As you've heard, Luke and I, we get up early and we go to the worship center to prepare and to get things together, which is typically 5 or 5:30 in the morning. Well, we were in the room with this individual, uh, one one year at camp. So we decide we're gonna wake him up. Well, actually, I don't know. We didn't really decide we were gonna wake him up. I got up and I went, Hey, let's see if this works. And I went, hey man, get up, you're late. So this individual is he had his phone. So how did he not? I don't know, but somehow he was not awake, he was still out of it, you know. So everybody don't wake up like us. So at 5 30, he's trying to figure out what is happening. He gets up because he thinks he's late. Like what we sell it, hey man, you're late, you gotta get up. We got stuff we gotta do.
SPEAKER_00We turn the lights on. We're like, you you you miss breakfast, you've got to get down here. We got to get set up for for color games, you know. Yeah, and well, so it worked out well, it worked out well.
SPEAKER_01So he gets up and like full blown gets ready for the day, and then realizes hey, it's 5 30 in the morning, as you would expect.
SPEAKER_00A grown man who realizes now he's an hour late, rushing, like trying to throw his clothes on, and it was it was wonderful.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it was. So he woke up early that day, he was not late. Um, but hey, we just started his day a little bit earlier.
SPEAKER_00I really don't remember, but I'm sure he was still late because he definitely went back to sleep.
SPEAKER_01Oh, what you got? You got anything? Let's see.
SPEAKER_00This same dude, this was not at merge, but one of our youth trips down to the beach at Laguna. He also never wears shoes. Uh, when you see him, he's typically barefooted. Yeah, and he would wear it, do that.
SPEAKER_01Not everybody was a fan of it, but Sunday mornings he would well, he would wear flip-flops, and but sometimes he'd take his flip-flops off at church and had him dogs fool out. Yeah, and there are some people that you gotta put shoes off.
SPEAKER_00But anyway, he is who he is, and most of the time he did not put the shoes on. But, anyways, we we found his uh flip-flops, and one night while we're at um I say camp, not merge, but with with the um the youth down at the beach, we we one night we go into Pier Park and you know let the kids eat dinner there and that kind of thing. So knowing that that night where he's got to wear these flip-flops, we we take them and put them in the freezer. And uh it was early in that morning when we did it, and I mean they've been in there all day long. We completely forgot about them. We're getting ready, and he's like, anybody seen my shoes? And then it hit us. Oh yeah, and we had one of the kids say, What is this in the freezer? BJ's like, Oh, he's like, Are you kidding me? So he puts them on and he's like, Our great wordies. It was uh very cold, and they didn't thaw out as fast as we thought they would either.
SPEAKER_01So BJ had to wear frozen uh flip-flops that night, but it was that was pretty funny.
SPEAKER_00He couldn't realize where they were a lot of the pranks.
SPEAKER_01He does, and he's a he's a good sport.
SPEAKER_00Um, you've already heard the story about you know the ghost in the room. Like the ghost. He is a very good sport and he he rolls with it, you know. He does.
SPEAKER_01Let's see what else we have. So one staying at at camp and another guy, not this was not BJ. I remember one year we were there, I don't it was at Chaco, so you would have been there, yeah. So every night, well, sometimes we have staff meeting in a big worship in the worship room when we were a little bit, I guess, of a smaller camp. We met in one of the the buildings up top. I know where this is going, and we were getting ready to have the staff meeting, and you know, the teenagers are excited, and it was a smaller room, and people's kind of sitting on a table or standing in the hallway. And I tried was trying to get everyone to be quiet so we could start the staff meeting.
SPEAKER_00Daniel is not the most forceful kind of guy, he's not like raising his voice, he's not being mad, he's not gonna get mad because people are talking. He's just like trying to get their attention, but not, you know, this ain't like you know, you're at school and teacher voice comes out and it's like, oh crap, we gotta be quiet. Yeah, he's just like, Hey, hey, we we need to get started.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm just gonna let you talk until you realize that I'm waiting on you, and then everybody will be quiet. But right they were not paying attention this time. Uh, so we had a grown man leader jump on the middle table in the room and just start barking. It was awesome. And everybody turned and looked at him. He's got a pretty good dog bar, too. But it was a grown man jumps on the table and just starts going at it, just barking.
SPEAKER_00And he's turning like each direction to make sure he gets everybody, and he definitely got everyone's attention. He did.
SPEAKER_01Then he was then he did that, everybody got quiet, and he was like, Okay, Daniel, you can start now.
SPEAKER_00It it worked, it worked, it definitely worked.
SPEAKER_01Uh so that was that was pretty funny that a grown man would it work. So uh let's uh there's some like really simple things.
SPEAKER_00Um last year we where we stayed for youth, you know, we're kind of at the beginning of the road for where the entrance to Shaco. So everybody else is like kind of up on the hill, and the the camp staff, the adults, were in a house on on the way up. And um Daniel and I both like coffee, and uh so I we we have these little baby cups, like they're tiny little cups, maybe eight ounces, maybe if that. And so I'm I typically drive the golf cart, but for whatever reason, this day Daniel jumps in the driver's seat, and it you know, don't bother me, whatever he wants to drive, no big deal. If you've ever been to Shaco, there's like 9,000 speed bumps on the road, which in a church van is a lot of fun, a lot of fun. Uh you can you can send them kids in the back up to the roof, boy.
SPEAKER_01But especially around Laguna, they have like the speed tables, and you hit those, and there's a lot not that we've done that, we can imagine that that would be fun.
SPEAKER_00It seems like it would be a lot of fun. So, anyways, we we get in there, and I think there's one coffee cup sitting in the cup holder. Daniel's holding one, and I notice he puts his arm out of the golf cart, which you know caught my caught my attention. And so, as I'm holding three of these little cups of coffee in my hand, he just plows through those speed bumps, and there's coffee going everywhere. And when we hit the go over the last speed bump, there's legit like five or six of them before we have to make our turn. He just looks at me, and uh, I mean it's early in the morning. I do we wake up early no matter which camp it is, and we're on the way to the to the worship center, and he's kind of looking at me like, you ain't gonna say nothing. I'm like, it is what it is, brother. Like, there ain't nothing I can do about it. You're an idiot, you know. It's like I ain't gonna get mad that you got coffee all in my socks, you know. It is what it is. You should have saw it coming. I should have coming. As soon as I saw the cup go out of the golf cart, I should have recognized I should do the same.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there was um good times at the first place we were at was it's a great location for us. They it got us going, but they had geese in around, like you're in Alabama, you think, well, that's not a big deal. But these so it was a very it was a smaller camp, so you were close to the lake and all that. Well, one night we had some individuals decided it would be a good idea to catch the geese and put them in our room. So I was not here for that one, yeah. So they did. I don't know how they did. I don't think they went and grabbed them and picked them up, but maybe they did. I don't know. But I do remember going back to the room, and you know, if you've ever been around where geese are, there's poop everywhere. So we had goose poop, well, that'd be goose goose poop in our room because we had some.
SPEAKER_00I don't think it would be geese poop.
SPEAKER_01Because we had some guys who went, hey, this would be funny to do, but they put it in our room out of all the places. Why would you not put it in somebody else's room? Somebody else's room. Like we have some people who want to bring fart spray, and they think it's funny to do fart spray. You don't do fart spray in your own room. No, you take it and you go put it in somebody else's room, which has happened, which is it has happened, but then I got a hold of it, and being the great parent, I am. Levi decided he wanted to go into my bathroom one time. So we have obviously the parents we have our bathroom, master bathroom. Well, he decided he was gonna come into my bathroom and use the bathroom. So I got the fart spray and sprayed it up under the door. So now he's stuck. Don't use my bathroom. Um, but I'll kind of how it happened to count too. Yeah, pretty much. Uh at uh the other location we were at, we there was a staff house that had some stairs. Well, the same individuals who decided it would be funny to put the geese in the room also came up with the idea to slide down the stairs on a mattress.
SPEAKER_00I've when I first came around, I I heard about these stories and was like, this is you know hilarious, but at the same time, it's like how how how does one come up with something like this? You know what I mean? Right. One of those individuals is currently uh kayaking down the Chattahoochee River 500 miles. So it's like there you go. He does some crazy stuff. It makes all make sense now.
SPEAKER_01Yes, that individual also was uh the reason we broke a glass window at Chaco when I was a children's pastor. He's like, Damn, I broke the window. I was like, Did you go tell somebody? He said, Yeah. I was like, I don't know what you all meant about it. That same group, it was him and there was some boys a little bit uh older than him when I first started at as a children's pastor. They had a water balloon slingshot at Shaco. They were so you got Bagley and then you got what's that Springview that's off that has a little bit of a balcony that kind of overlooks where or you can see where people walk. Oh, yeah, yeah. So these great fellas are on the balcony shooting water balloons down, just launching them cars, people just hitting everything. Button group is well, they would yes, they would do it, they would shoot it, and then somebody would look and they'd take off running, and they'd just like they were right outside our room. So they would run back into the room. So I looked at them and I saw them, and they looked at me, and I was like, if you're gonna do this, don't run back into your room.
SPEAKER_02Like go to somebody else's room, quite obvious who you are.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, go to another building and then run somewhere, and then if you have to come back to your room, they don't see you shut the door and walk in the room to know where you're at. Like, if you're gonna do this, be smart about it.
SPEAKER_00This has nothing to do at all with merge or anything like that. But I saw a video the other day where boy goes up to the house, he's gonna ding dong ditch him, and before he could even hit the doorbell, the lady is at the front door, and he opens she opens up the door and he's like, I'm so sorry. She's like, Can I help you? He was like, I was gonna ding dong ditch you. She's like, Does your dad know you're doing this? And he's like, Yes, ma'am, and she's like, I doubt that. I will call him right now. Okay, and so then you hear the dad yell, What's the hold up? He's like, My dad says this is a core memory for him, and he wanted to be a part of it. And so when the dad yells that he looks back, he's like, I've been caught. He's like, Well, run, you idiot. Don't just stand there, stand in the door. So then on the video, you see the dad spread across the yard, and then the kid just follows him, and she's like, What just happened? That's that's the kind of stuff that that we see at merge, like those those kids not knowing how to respond. Like, don't go in your own room, that's how you get caught.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we have some good ideas with things. Um, we have to load a U-Haul. We really don't have good ideas with things. We have bad ideas with things. This this was one of them that could have ended very bad, but it it worked. We take a U-Haul, and one year, I don't know why, but we didn't have a lot of stuff, so we had a lot of empty space. Well, we wanted to take a golf cart, and this is when you could take golf carts. Yeah, so we're standing there and we're going, Well, we don't want to have to pull another trailer. So, what do we do with a golf cart? Somebody looks and goes, Hey, there's a lot of space in that U-Haul.
SPEAKER_00We can drive it up this ramp.
SPEAKER_01But I was like, How are how are we gonna get the U-Haul? I mean the golf cart in the U-Haul. Well, and it does have that little ramp. Yeah, so somebody thought, we'll drive it up the ramp. It don't fit.
SPEAKER_00It's a golf cart, slightly wider than the ramp.
SPEAKER_01Yes. So instead of looking at it and going, This is not a good idea, this is not gonna fit. We somehow, somebody they ride up the golf cart while people are trying to hold up the other side, and we get the golf cart in the back of the U-Haul, and I went, That could have gone very bad, very wrong.
SPEAKER_00Very bad. But it worked, it worked, and that is true. I wonder if they have any rules about that on the on the U-Haul. Probably. We've we've talked about sometimes we break rules and we don't realize we're breaking rules. That might be one of 'em.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it was well, it was gas. I was gonna say it was battery powered, so it wouldn't matter, but it was gas. I don't know if that matters, but maybe we should stop talking. Yeah, and that and then uh we are notorious for a balloon drop fell.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah. This happened what, twice now? Twice now.
SPEAKER_01Yes. One of the one of them we about pulled down the entire light because we thought, oh, we'll just tie it to that light up there. Cause you're thinking when you pull the according all of the videos.
SPEAKER_00Yes. It's super simple.
SPEAKER_01Super simple.
SPEAKER_00Pull the cord and all the balloons just fall right out of it.
SPEAKER_01All right. Don't work that way. It does not work that way.
SPEAKER_00I don't know if we buy the cheap ones. Well, we definitely buy the cheap ones because there's some that are really expensive. And we're like, oh well, we'll just buy this one, you know, off Amazon. That's a lot cheaper. Right.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think that's been our downfall. Yes. We tried it one year uh when we were at Hargis and it did not work. Then we tried it last year, and it it seems simple. Grab the cord and pull it. It don't it seems that way.
SPEAKER_00It seems that it should work.
SPEAKER_01So that can't last year. It was supposed to be a big confetti go off, balloon drop, like great opening. Cafetti went off. No balloon. Balloons are still no balloon.
SPEAKER_00And then they get like a a very tiny portion. I mean, it was a big one. What? It was like 20 foot. I mean, it was maybe our foot of it got opened. Yeah. So you see a few little balloons start to drop, but then they can't get the rest of it. Uh and we so we had like teenagers, I guess, on either side. We kind of go across each other, and it did not work. Did not. So then BJ, who we've mentioned several times already, he goes and grabs it and just starts running with it and still don't work. It's just bending the whole thing. Whoever hung that thing up there did a fantastic job. It was not falling off the rafters. No.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So some of the things we do just it just don't work out. Some of them are very tedious. Uh early in the in the years, we came up with an idea to make uh it kind of looked like bubbles, but it wasn't bubbles. What we did, we got styrofoam cups, and you know they have the ring that kind of goes around the top of it. We cut I don't know how many, probably a thousand of those off of the top of a cup, and wired them together to make like four sheets of the the idea was that white when light hits something white, it changes and it would be a great and it did look cool, but it took I mean, could you you first have to cut the ring off the top, then you had to wire like little wire all thousand of these tops together, and I never threw them away. I kept them, I was like, dude, this stuff took so long. I think we might have used them two years.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we ended up using them. I think it was our second year at Shaco. Um, yeah, there's things that I hear about because I wasn't there at Hargis. There's you know, not I was gonna say horror stories, not horror stories, but things that were difficult, things that didn't go well, or funny things. Like I've heard about the geese, I heard about the mattresses, you know, I heard about the black fabric, which we've mixed more. We still have all of it. Uh, but every single year that there's been a thought of of any kind of water, it's been we're not using those cups, we're not doing doing more cups. And uh it we did end up using it. I think we had some kind of a water theme. I forget what the theme was. All the themes seem to like run together now.
SPEAKER_01Well, there's so I mean, yes, you have an entire Bible of stuff to teach, but coming up with themes is quite difficult. It's quite difficult.
SPEAKER_00Here's another one of those things. If you want to help us out, you got a good idea of a theme and t-shirt design and yeah, scripture that goes along with it.
SPEAKER_01So we try in the early early years up until like four years ago, we did our own set design. We cling cling wrapped, I don't know if that's right, the the plastic wrap trusses together, and that was looking at it, it was like that's don't look good.
SPEAKER_00I remember so this was my that was my very first year here. I think the theme was lit, and so we had all kinds of like different you know, light um changes and things like that. And so the idea was you know, that cling wrap that's not straight, and it has different ripples and things like that in it, so it reflects the light like you know, crazy, right? It don't all go the same direction, and as we're wrapping this thing, like so we wrap the truss itself on either side, and then we ended up uh wrapping the two together, and as we're doing it, I'm sitting there going, like, this is stupid, this is not gonna work. And we got done, and it was like, Man, this looks great.
SPEAKER_01This is great. So, we also have you know, anytime you go on a trip, they're sooner or later you're gonna run into travel problems. Oh, of course, it always happens sooner or later, it's gonna get you. We had the one year with the trailer got stuck on the wreck field, and we were trying to get it off. The problem with that was the week before they had cowboy camp, and cowboy camp brings horses and cows to camp. Well, when you start getting in the mud and things are stuck, it don't smell like mud. Uh then a couple of years ago, we got stuck on the side of the road because we had to, it was in the early years of us becoming a nonprofit, right? Because we didn't have a vehicle, so we had to borrow a vehicle from a church just randomly. It was somebody that I knew, but they were like, Hey, we have this old bus, you can use our bus. So we get the bus and it gets us there, and it's great.
SPEAKER_00Then on the way home, well, I think there were some issues with it because BJ spent some time that there was a leak in one of the tires, and so he ended up the folks at Shaco were super great. Uh, he ended up getting with one of the maintenance men, and he the guy's like, Yeah, drive it up here to the maintenance shed. And so they go up there and put air in it, but obviously there was something in it, and uh they didn't, you know, they they weren't able to to plug it or patch it or whatever because they didn't realize it wasn't super low. It was just he knew you know, we're going home tomorrow, we need to go ahead and you know fill this thing up. And uh obviously there was something in the tire.
SPEAKER_01Yes, we got a few minutes down the road from Shaco's.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it wasn't 10 minutes, it wasn't super far that we got away from Shaco.
SPEAKER_01And the tire did the tire blow or busted. It busted, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So it was a dually, so you still had one good tire on the back, right? So we were able to kind of limp it. Uh we were stuck on the side of the road, and it was one of those things we typically travel with walkie-talkies, so we're all able to kind of communicate. We were probably halfway between you know Chaco, which is Talladega, and Silicaga. Right. So maybe it was 15 20 minutes, but uh, I'm in Silicaga and I look back. I mean, you we're tired, man. We're tired, we've been in camp. He was gone. I look back and I'm like, Oh man, I don't see a single car back there. So I called Daniel, I'm like, what happened? He's like, I think we got and I was like, You think he's like, Yeah, we're on the side of the road out of the road.
SPEAKER_01So that we had that bus had some teenagers in it, but luckily Somerville was able to send a bus to get them, but then we were stuck on the side of the road. We ended up pulling into a church parking lot, like on by on this back road, and set there. Well, because we had to go.
SPEAKER_00Somebody went to the bus wasn't like a school bus, so it wasn't that big, but it was a big bus. So it wasn't like you ain't just turning around in some yard, you know, you can't pull in a driveway back out and turn around. Right. So BJ starts down this road because we saw a sign that said church, and it's like a mile and a half down this road, which if you don't know where you're going, it's like if you're going to somebody's house you've never been before, and you know, it says it's a mile away, that mile feels like seventh, yeah, you know. So we're like going down this country road, and there's these like farms all around us, you know. And anyway, so we finally get to that church and uh get the Somerville to come get the majority of the kids. Majority of the there were still several that stayed with us.
SPEAKER_01My family who was mad.
SPEAKER_00They were not happy. Well, Somerville only had so many seats, you know, so we could only send so many. Uh they yeah, they were not happy because it's the middle of the summer. It's stupid hood. The van or I mean the bus already had some AC issues. Uh, we needed gas. We couldn't just leave the AC on the whole time. But anyway, so yeah, I think I ran I ran up to a tire store in uh in Silicaga, and I don't remember what all I got. Uh I guess I had to take the rim and tire. No, we didn't even have uh we could a tire iron or nothing to be able to take the tires off. We didn't have a jack, we didn't have anything. So I went there, got um I got the jack. I think I ended up having to go back.
SPEAKER_01I think you did because I remember my wife was I love her, but she was not loving me that day. My wife was not super happy either, brother. Because in that moment, like for me, all I can do is like laugh. Like it at this point, it's funny. Like it she did not think so, the kids did not think so. It's for it's after camp, everybody's ready to get home, and we're stuck on the side of the road. We can't change the tire because we don't have anything to change the tire with.
SPEAKER_00Things like that genuinely just don't bother us either, and so it's like we being mad about having to deal with something doesn't change the the problem. We're still stuck here, so we we are kind of laughing, joking as we finally figure out what we need to do. I think it was uh Somerville when they came to get the kids, they actually had a jack. They did, yeah. I do remember that. And so I had already borrowed one from a tire shop. I went to the hardware store or something and bought uh two tire irons because I wasn't sure which side slugs we had. It's like anyway, so we finally get back, we're able to change the tire, we get back on the road, and uh our wives were starting to be happy again. A couple hours later, we finally pulled back into town to unload the U-Haul. And that everybody that had already gotten into town was sitting there waiting on us because we had to unload some of them went home and changed clothes. They were asking, like, can we get our stuff off the bus? And we're like, Nope. The only way to ensure that we help get help with this uh unloading this U-Haul is you gotta be there, you gotta be there too. We gotta keep your stuff.
SPEAKER_01So it was fun times uh when you when you travel and something happens, you just kind of kind of roll with it and make it make the best of it.
SPEAKER_00You mentioned uh we did our own set design and stuff for for a while. One of the ladies who serves with us, she's on the board, and she kind of does she's a jack of all trades. She can do everything. She's the one who I think this year we had waves and she cut them all out for us. And it was it was great, painted them everything. Uh, but she was not able to go that year, and so I was in charge of getting everything together. So there was a couple things I had to build. I had to put the she did the waves and all, and I had to build the stuff to make them stand up, I had to build the stands and all that kind of thing. And up till that point, I really hadn't had a whole lot of responsibility other than speaking. I think this is the second year I was involved, and uh, so obviously, if I'm the one who's building these things to go along with this, I should have brought tools. You would think. And we get there, and I ask, where's the toolbox? And Daniel's looking at me like, You the one that's got tools. What do you mean? Where are the tools? So we end up having to go to I think it's Marvin's right there. Marvin's had to go buy a bunch of stuff. It was it was fantastic. Um, now again, one of those things where I should have been more prepared. Should have. But instead of people getting mad and hating, uh, they joke instead of being actually mad, and uh, we just go get the stuff we gotta get to make it work, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we uh we kind of roll with things even when people forget stuff that they're supposed to bring, like tools. I haven't forgotten tools hence. We didn't have them early in the thing, as you heard, when the the drain and shower we had no tools, which I was not a part of.
SPEAKER_00It was not, yeah, that's true. But we but but when we're bringing the tools that we need to get set stuff together, you typically not think of you know plumbing stuff.
SPEAKER_01That is that is that is true. But the the good thing with the staff is we we're okay laughing at each other. It's funny how some of these staff members, it's really like college age and high school kids that do this, they come out and they they want people to think they're the super athletic person. Um, and we play kickball and they like strike out in kickball because they can't kick the ball, and we laugh at them, yeah, and we make jokes, and most of the time, I don't think anybody's got their feelings hurt yet. But when you do mess up or forget tools or whatever, you will hear about it. You're gonna hear about it. You're gonna hear about it, but it's in love and it's fun, and that's what makes camp fun over the since 2012 is to be able to have these stories and relationships and to look back over the years to to laugh at what happens, but also to hold on to those stories because that's kind of who made us, and we learned as we went. There were some some good things that a lot of good things that have come out of camp, a lot of life change. Obviously, that's why we do what we do, is so kids and teenagers can hear about Jesus. Um, but it's also the relationships we build along the way and the stories that we tell and the memories that we make. That's a little look into some of the stories that was more we do, we did have some stuff on here that was a little more serious of top moments that have stuck out over the years. Maybe we'll do those another day. But um, today we wanted to kind of just go off the cuff, share some stories, laugh a little bit. Hopefully, you don't think we're too complete morons.
SPEAKER_00If there is any uh advice uh from from this is you you should surround yourself with people who who care about you, you know, if if there wasn't that that culture, if the culture wasn't created to where we are a a family that we we do love each other, we do support each other. Uh if that wasn't the case, then you you can't laugh about your mistakes. You can't, you know, joke with someone who has had you know five pot flies hit to them and ain't caught a single one of them in kickball, you know it's a square in the chest every time. Uh those those things don't uh don't just happen by by chance, you know. It's because there's a relationship there that everyone involved, I've been on the receiving end multiple times of that uh because of those kinds of things. Something stupid I say or something I do, but whatever. Uh it's it we're we do have a a relationship that is that is there, and we've surround ourselves with people that they they care. We we care about one another, and so uh those things aren't held against us.
SPEAKER_01They're just brought up over and over. And any other takeaway, the biggest one, if it looks like butter, Luke will eat it.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna eat it. It's gonna have a baby.
SPEAKER_01All right. Well, that's all we got for this week. Uh, like, share, comment. If you got questions, got things you'd like to hear like answered, whether it's ministry, whether it's family, anything, throw something out at us. I'm sure uh it'll be a fun time hearing if you sooner or later you're gonna hear Luke and I argue. It's going to happen. Um, but until then, enjoy your week. Like, share, comment, spread the word. You can go on to merge dash ministries.com to find out more information about us. Uh how to what are you doing? I got a cramp. For real, man. Like, get your leg over. And this is where we need a camera. This joker is like I'm sorry, brother.
SPEAKER_00I was trying to be quiet. Oh my oh, I caught a cramp in my calf.
SPEAKER_01Hush, so I can finish this.
SPEAKER_00Sorry.
SPEAKER_01Go to merge-ministries.com to find information on camps, ways that you can support the ministry, and also uh we have a giving platform called Give Butter. If you'd like to support the ministry in that way, you can do that as well. So have a great week, and we'll see you next week.
SPEAKER_00See you bye.