Attempting to Fly

After four training weekends, countless hours of homework, a wilderness first aid course, and a ten-day training (in which we put all our knowledge to use), we were sent off into the mountains for our first trip. I’m the type of person who likes a lot of time to pack and prepare for things long in advance. Despite three months of doing just that, campers arrived and my state of receiving them was similar to that of a bird who had just attempted to fly through a clear glass window. And then, after a hard smack of rejection flutters around stunned on the ground. It took me about three days to get my legs back under me, before I felt like I came to and was tracking where I was and what I was there to do. The majority of my first week out in the mountains, I felt more scattered than any of the campers and I found a constant smattering of my things throughout our campsite- surrounding my pack. At one point I came over to find my co-guide packing my bag for me with a patient smile. Later I was told, “Welcome to being a first year” and to expect to feel this way (one step behind the rest) throughout the summer. Before we headed out of camp, we asked our campers their fears and expectations. Several of them told us boldly that they expected to have an encounter with God this week- expecting that He had some big things to teach them. What a daunting expectation to be voiced when I wasn’t sure we would ever get out of base camp! I know that as guides we are here to serve the campers and help facilitate their journey into the mountains, to create space for them to experience God through His creation. However, my human tendency was to stress out about what the campers were experiencing… as if I could better their communication with the Creator. The beautiful thing was, that amidst my chaos and human weaknesses, God was hard at work.
 The first few days, amongst my flustered state, it was difficult to see any evidence that God was meeting the participants expectations. However, slowly, as life stories unfolded we began to see old, unhealed wounds resurface and participants began to engage in prayer that had been silent at the start. One participant shared about the loss of parent. At the beginning of the trip, she portrayed an independent, self-sufficient, hard exterior. As the final days in the mountains passed, we watched her heart soften and ability to accept love and help grow. It is tough to describe the emotions you experience as you hear stories and deep, previously unspoken, emotions come pouring out of people. When else in life do we take time to dive deep into our hearts to identify and share our joys, passions, pain or sorrow with others?
 This first trip awed me. After our final ten day training trip I thought I was prepared for anything. We experienced all types of storms: high winds that shredded our tents in the middle of the night, lightning drills, sideways snow in a whiteout, freezing rain- I thought I was prepared for everything. Then, on the last day of descent with my campers, we hit the alder trees. My frustration hit a boiling point (that I was shocked to discover) and I found myself whacking every branch that snapped at me as if I could get back at it. Branches would slap me in the face, and then snag my pack and yank me backward. I have fully realized that I am on a journey much like the campers and I am definitely not in control. I do know that God is working intricately in a powerful way to meet me in those weaknesses. I have been truly humbled to witness how much work he was able to do as I stumbled along acting as the ‘guide’.
- Hannah Gary

Surprises

When I came to Beyond, I expected that being a guide would be spiritually challenging yet refining, exhausting yet life-giving, and emotionally draining yet encouraging. I knew that I came to serve. What I didn’t expect was that I would actually be having fun as well. 

Last week I headed out with my guide partner and campers to trek Long Pearkes. It was a grueling first two days. At times I felt like a slave driver as I kept telling the participants that we had to keep going even though they had blisters, tired legs, and were fed up with the branches slapping their faces. We got into camp later than planned and had less time than we wanted for planned spiritual content (Bible studies, quiet times, life stories, etc.). 

On day three everything changed. Due to a variety of factors, my guide partner and I decided we were unable to cross the Long Pearkes glacier and would need to change routes. As a mountain guide I felt defeated, dreading the time when I would have to tell our campers about the route change. I had to give up my own desire to test my physical limits and complete the epic route for the sake of overall safety. I had to embrace the mystery as my first trip became full of the unexpected. 

In the end, the situation turned out much better than I anticipated. For me, this had been a reoccurring theme associated with Beyond Malibu. God redeemed the situation and blew my mind with His sovereign goodness. The participants were overjoyed at the news of the route change; it meant less hiking and more time to be together and alone with God. This was the day that I started having fun as a mountain guide. I was able to be less task-oriented and more people-oriented.  With the route change, our group now had more time to hear everyone’s life stories, pray, laugh, cry, and overall be present with each other in some of God’s most beautiful creation.

As the week went on, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying the taping and re-taping of feet, purifying forty liters of water at a time, cooking amongst the seemingly endless bug swarms, and engaging in conversations on the trail, despite physical exhaustion.

In a few days I leave for my second trip as a guide. I’ll be okay if it’s not as enjoyable as my first trip. But I have a feeling that this whole guiding thing might really continue to be more fun than I imagined. Maybe that’s what God likes to do when we follow His lead into the unknown… surprise us. 

-Joey Hope

A Prayer For Rain

A Prayer for Rain

Rain.  The outcome of saturated air… Millions and millions of microscopic droplets of water vapor- nestled into the multilayered clouds, condense and transform into the rain drops that fall from our sky. This complex, but understated phenomena nourishes our world: soil moistens to foster plant growth and streams fill to power hydros and water mills. Rain replenishes and rejuvenates life.

It has been a very dry season here at Beyond Malibu base camp. Our mountains have  been basking in sunlight for a couple of months now… The sun is a radiant source, but now (as we move into our summer season of campers) we need rain! In the minds of modern people, rain is burdensome: soaking our clothes and acting as another element to our daily schedules. However, rain is a true blessing in the workings of our christian community. Rainfall promises plentiful supplies of water in the mountains for our guides and campers.

June 18, 2015 our guides left at 5am for their training endeavors. Six hours later, small rain drops fell from the sky. Praise the Lord! It was a mild drizzle, BUT it was a great reminder. A reminder that God PROVIDES. He is the source of life, for He made day and He made rain. He is faithful to us and our needs…Receiving rain the day the guides left encourages us to remember that it is not our timing that makes the world run, but HIS. When we feel doubt and anxiety, we need to surrender those encroaching feelings to Him, and  PRAY. Palms up, eyes closed, and heart open, so that He may fill us with assurance and patience. In His perfect timing rain will sustain our community.

Please continue to pray for all the staff, that their minds may be buried in his love and secure in His promises. Pray for rain!

Shalom

 By: Natalie de Guzman

Over the past couple weeks, we at Beyond Malibu have been learning and understanding the importance and meaning of Shalom (a hebrew word). It can be defined as peace, completeness, prosperity, and welfare: universal peace and flourishing. I long for it everyday. I long for peace and completeness. Today, I longed to come to peace with the endless bug bites that dot my legs, feet, and arms. I so often find myself feeling sad because I cannot experience brief moments of shalom as often as I want…Amy, one of our mentors and friends here, says “feeling sad and longing for the things we know we need and want is one of the secrets to experiencing shalom. Feeling sad that shalom doesn’t exist everywhere is important to come to grips with. It is okay to feel sad.” IT IS OKAY TO FEEL SAD. Broken shalom is just one of the many consequences of sin. We are willing to try many different ways to find shalom. Some will go to drastic measures. More often than not, “we settle for cheap imitations of shalom, never really getting a glimpse or taste of what it really is.” However, shalom will come again. It exists and our God “loves it. He created it. It was His idea.” Since coming to Beyond, it has become easier for me to recognize God-given moments and blessings of shalom. 

A couple nights ago, I remember tipping my head back in laughter. When I came up for air and looked around me, I realized I was surrounded by genuine, loving believers, whom I already felt a strong connection with, similar to everyone else here at base camp. The mountain glow was giving off a peaceful shadow, accentuating our faces and making the water in the inlet sparkle, while stilled and resting. We were sprawled out between three trees in eight hammocks — which we call Hammock City -- at the edge of the water, resting after a busy day of work. I felt happy. I felt peace and completeness. THIS WAS SHALOM.

Another Blog on Stillness

God continues to surprise us with His incomprehensible love, the love we try to fit in a box and make sense of. He individually pursues us in various forms that often astounds us, sometimes with people and sometimes by putting us back in the places we thought we would never go again. Betsy Floyd was a Beyond participant in 2010. She decided to come back this summer to serve on base camp staff as assistant cook. Little did she know God's pursuit did not stop just at base camp but extended to the mountains as well. 

At a recent bible study in basecamp, we were asked to draw a picture that depicts our relationship with God. In the one minute I was given for the task, a megaphone sounding off into a slightly “Dumboesque” ear was pried from my subconscious. My explanation was that God was the ear and I was the megaphone: loud and jarring, sending crazed, aperiodic sound waves into space, hoping an ear was out there listening, no sense of peace or stillness to be found. A few weeks before this drawing, I was summoned to join a trip up JJ. At the end of the second day of hiking we dragged our sorry selves to our campsite: the illustrious Sun City. Enclosed in the arms of the surrounding mountains was a large granite area splitting an aquamarine glacier pool in two. The sun was merely a willing aid, illuminating the gradient hues of the pools and its reflection of the peaks. This is one of those sights where I wondered how few people in this world get to see something as raw and beautiful as Sun City. Shortly after arriving, I laid down for a nap, letting the sun warm my chapped face. Obliterated from the hiking, the usual barrage of my thoughts was absent. No pleading or demanding, no thanking, nothing. The sun’s rays filtered gold through my eyelids as my body slowly relaxed and melted into the rock. I began to feel that strange and tangible peace that comes only from the submission to stillness. I perceive this state as a sacred realm, intimate and of God. In this realm, God’s message is clear and convicting. 

Sun City

In my day-to-day life, I find that what I say and what is understood by others are often two different things. Not a rare phenomenon by any means, but daily experiences of not being heard slowly feed into a sense of desperation to feel understood. This is why I talk at God so often. The beauty of being still is that it often leads to a position of listening for God. As one listens, the desperation begins to slip away. Sitting in stillness on that rock at Sun City reminded me that only God can truly understand and respond to me in the uniquely meaningful way my heart desires. But first I need to stop talking and be still. It is in this place, I will be open to that which I have been longing to hear. 

Betsy Floyd

Diving into the Depths

One of my favorite reasons why I love being at Beyond Malibu is the opportunity to people watch. Not the kind of people watching you would do at Disneyland or at the mall at Christmas time, but the opportunity to watch people grow. This summer I was placed in a community of believers in all different areas of their walk with Christ. Paige Kantor, one of the amazing Pack Shack ladies, is one of those people I have been blessed to see grow in her walk with the Lord as she experiences Him in the inlet this summer.

The following is a reflection of my time here at basecamp: 

God’s love for us is deep; trying to understand it is like trying to dive down into the depths of the Princess Louisa inlet that leads to basecamp. I deeply desire to dive into the water, touch the bottom, and come back up with a rock, proving that the bottom is there and that I have the ability to grasp its depth. On the way down my ears begin to hurt; the pressures of the water makes me feel like my brain might explode. Eventually, I’ll run out of air. When I come up with the prized rock, I won’t be afraid to show it off. The people close to me will see the proof that I had the courage to dive down deep enough to find treasure, which is just a small glimpse of what the bottom actually looks like. This treasure is a flash of the miles and miles of ocean floor on this planet, yet we are easily impressed with a single stone.

In the same way, the vastness of God’s love for us is incomprehensible. His love stretches on for eternity and beyond what is imaginable. I cannot fathom the depth of it, yet I will continue to dive down in hopes of catching a small glimpse of this Love. And after reaching the bottom I may even be able to share the treasure of His love with a few others.

    

I won’t be at Beyond forever, but God’s love surrounds me everywhere I go. I am reminded of it as I look into the trees and the mountains, which seem to go on forever. The waterfalls that rush down the mountains in a peaceful consistent rhythm are reminiscent of God’s constant love for us. The birds exemplify how God provides the wind we need to carry us and the branches we need to find rest on. I enjoy how the sunshine beams down warming our spirits and how the seals bask in creation. The bioluminescence is yet another indication of God’s indescribable creativity and that He surprises us with gifts we don’t deserve. I only have a few days left in the Princess Louisa inlet, but a lifetime of exploring God’s creation. Thanks be to The Lord, my Father in Heaven, for reminding me that I am loved deeply and that if I trust Him, He will bring me to places of peace and reflection. He brings me to places, like Beyond, that I never imagined to exist. Beyond Malibu is a small glimpse of God’s love for me, a small treasure I will carry with me forever. It has felt like a flash of time in which I’ve experienced the depths of His love and the fluid movements of His Holy Spirit. In the end, I hope to have the chance to share this experience with a few others, to describe what it has been like to live in God’s presence. Maybe they too will be eager to experience it themselves, and will desire to dive deep into the wonder of God and the beautiful creation He has placed us in.

Paige Kantor

The Unsuspecting Follower

Forrest, a first year sea kayak guide, enjoys creating poems inspired by his time here at Beyond Malibu. His poem, "The Unsuspecting Follower", is a reflection from his time on the waters and in the mountains.

The Unsuspecting Follower

Through a dark broken world

That seems too evil, to be prone

Not knowing who to trust

We wander lost and alone.

Can we trust in ourselves

In our own strength and mind?

The answer we must learn

So we leave to try and find.

We go beyond our own limits

To test ourselves there,

To a place that is wild,

Undefiled, bursting with clean air

But we find ourselves lacking

In need of a Guide

And if we simply just ask

We find a Guide at our side,

A Guide that has been there

Every water, every mountain, every stream,

And with our Guide at our side

The world is different than it would seem.

Yes the world is still broken

And we often lose our way

But our Guide is with us always

Our path He helps stay

And we wonder why we never

Noticed Him from the start.

Sometimes we must go beyond

To find Him in our heart

                                     

                             Forrest Henrichs