It all started during spring break. For my break I went to Winter Park, Colorado with my church youth group. We stayed at a "bible college thing" it's hard to explain. But that's not important. I thought a lot on this trip. Whether it be on the slopes of the mountain while I furiously tried to learn how to snowboard or on the 14 hour drive to and from Colorado. I learned a lot on the trip but that's not really what I want to talk about. On the trip back while we were winding our way through the Rockies and towards Denver the driver of our van, a guy named Xeres, asked us some quite deep questions. One of those being what our calling is. I took time to reflect on the question as the rest of the students quickly answered the question as if they had known it from the moment of their birth. As I looked out the window towards the vast mountains I sat there in silence. Everyone was finished answering and I was still silent. Xeres asked me if I had any input on the topic. I told him to give me a second and then continued to look at the light dusting of snow that was occurring at the foot of the mountains. I pondered for a moment. Everyone in the van moved on to another topic and I didn't talk for a good number of moments until I came to a conclusion. I told him that I think my calling has something to do with my favorite things in life. While others might want to branch out and try new things I think that my calling goes into things that I already love. But I need to use these things to help others not just me. So the topic of hunting came up. Because it's my life right now. It's all I think about and it's all I want to do. I told him about how a couple of younger boys have been on my heart so to speak. That I need to get close to them, teach them things, take them places that they wouldn't go otherwise. And I can do all of those things by hunting. I told him how I thought it would be cool that even if it wasn't an "official" ministry at our church that a hunting ministry type thing would be awesome. At that point it kinda falls into a mentor ship esque thing. Not only are you showing younger generations a beautiful sport, but a lot of good conversations can happen while your out in the woods with someone. It made me think about how powerful something like this might be. People could have someone to open up to while still having great expieriences to bond with each other. And maybe it wouldn't just be MY ministry. Others could partake, adults could take teens and older teens that enjoyed the sport could mentor younger kids and it could be a really powerful thing in the church.
This idea was enforced even more when I took my little sister out yesterday. It took some convincing but I got my 8 year old sister to come shoot guns with me. Now granted they were .22's (really small guns) which have no kick whatsoever but she still came. She shot with me and through that I got to teach her all kinda of neat things. My sister doesn't just get up and say that she wants go with me to shoot stuff. I don't think that's a normal occurrence with anyone's little sisters. So I wanted to make the most of it. Anytime I'm with her outside I try and teach her something that I know. But this was definantly a bigger opportunity. I got to share my love of firearms with her and better yet the girl can shoot. While she may have been nervous at first she got pretty good at it. We were shooting cams at about 20 ft or so but she actually hit one and by the end of the time she wanted to keep shooting. We went and shot into a pond which she thought was really cool. She had no idea that when a bullet hits the water it woul make a big splash. So the moment I did it she was begging me to let her try. It was a proud day for me to get to show her things like that. I got show her wildlife also. Some wood ducks flew over and screeched at us. We saw a blue heron and just overall had a good time while at the same time getting to teach her some things. She's so much fun to be around and sometimes I forget about that.
The expierience as a whole definantly made me think this mentor ship type thing is something I really want to do. I love showing people new things. Especially things that I love so much. I think that's what I'm being called to in all honesty. This isn't a very long post but it's all I got. So comment if you have any inputs or thoughts. Conversation can provoke thinking and things like this are important to think about. Have a marvelous day/night/morning/evening or whatever it is where you are. Do something to make the world awesome today.
-Willis
