Monday, January 30, 2012

Staff Promotions: Go Big, Go Beyond

A few months ago, after nearly a year of work, we wrapped up our new staff promotions poster. We are staffing for our 2012 summer and wanted to share this with you.


There's no shortage of these so if you, your college group or YL office would like a few copies, drop us a note and we'll send them right over.

Thanks Becca Williams and Joel Shoop for the design and Steven Gnam, Jeff Milsten and others for the photography.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Leader Interviews

We recently asked a few Young Life leaders and staff about their experiences with Beyond Malibu.  This is what they had to say about the ministry. 



Thanks Ben for putting the video together, and Casey Price, Kiki Lund, Mason Rutledge and Sarah Fields for sharing with us.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Snow Day!


The last few days have been pretty snowy in Seattle. Some people are calling it the Snowpocalypse and the Washington State Governor declared a state of emergency this morning, but really it's only like five inches of snow. I kind of like the way Seattle collectively decides to take the day off. It's like this wonderful pocket of freedom nestled right in the middle of a long winter/month/work week, and for the most part you can't do anything about it. Because Beyond staff sticks together like snowball snow, a bunch of us found ourselves holed up in a house together for the day. It was awesome. We reverted to ten-year-oldness and elected ourselves a snow-day president and vice president. Our activities included the creation of a 6 ft snowman, one snow angel, talk of chocolate flavored snow-cones (that's all we had), a snowball fight (of course), a romp in the "woods" across the street, and the contemplation of a polar bear plunge. We also had our fill of hot chocolate and popcorn. It was an awesome time to strip away all of our concerns about work and money and meaning and just spend the day in community with each other and the rest of God's creation.

This pocket of freedom is kind of the way Beyond trips work, too. They're an entire week away from all of the drama and worries of normal life. For one week you strip yourself of media and work and deadlines and success and failure and just be, be with God, with creation, and with yourself. All of the things that seem so important at home (like "wearing a clean shirt" and "showering") don't even show up on the radar once you get out on the water or up in the mountains.

If you enjoy a good snow day and long for a snow-cone covered pocket of freedom even in the middle of summer, you should check out Beyond; snow cones included.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Letter to Self

A lot of people keep journals. They're a nice way to capture emotional and intellectual experiences, to freeze-frame the process of growth. Every now and then I find myself returning to certain journals and reliving certain times of my life. It's great to be reminded of what is important to me and why it has become important, especially after the excitement and emotion of an experience has faded.

At Beyond, we try to one-up the habit of journaling. It has been our experience that Beyond trips can be a tremendous time of spiritual and emotional maturing. It's pretty easy, though, to return from a Beyond trip and have all of those character fortifying moments turn into nothing but sentimental memories. So some guides like to take a freeze-frame of the emotional and spiritual experience of Beyond and have it pop back up in campers lives when they least expect it. We call it "Letter to Self," because that's what it is. Guides have participants sit down at the summit or the end of the trip and write a letter to themselves about what they experienced that week. Then we send the letters out later in the year, usually around New Years. It's kind of a double whammy of awesomeness. First, you get a letter in the mail; who doesn't like that? Then you get this random trip back to a time when the distractions of life had been stripped away and it was easier to see what was important. It's better than just keeping a journal because you are guaranteed to read it. The whole thing is pretty neat.

The picture above is from Joey Leppien. He went on a Sea Kayaking trip this past summer. When he received his letter in the mail this week, he liked it so much that he posted it to Facebook. I like it because it's proof that we really do send out those letters. If you want to receive a letter from an awesome version of yourself next New Years, you should sign up for a Beyond trip now.


Friday, January 6, 2012

Stacks of Packs




We have a room in our office that is full of packs. At the end of every summer we wash, dry, inventory, and inspect everything that Beyond owns. The packs in the room are the ones that were in need of a little extra love and repair. I just started working at Beyond again and I thought it would be cool to move into that room and pretend I had my own office. The moment I opened the door to check it out I was hit by a wave of smell, the smell of pack. Now, some people might use the word stench to describe the odor of compounding BO, dirt, and something somehow sweet, but to me it just smells like memories. These packs have worked hard for the privilege of their smell. They have hauled dozens of pounds of gear up countless mountains on the backs of campers of all shapes and sizes. A Beyond pack gets used eight times more than a pack owned by your average Joe (or Jane) Shmoe. They get drenched in sweat, thrown on the ground, sat on (I mean wait, that doesn’t happen), stuffed until bursting, dragged through the mud, rained on, and then scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. If you’ve been to Beyond, you can imagine the smell. If you’ve ever worked at Beyond, you're probably like me and have come to love the smell. When I leave the door open the whole office wreaks of nostalgia and some of the best times of my life. In fact most of the clothes I wear in the mountains smell the same way when I take them out of the drier.

I was trying to come up with some analogy for these packs and the Beyond experience. I guess like the packs you might get roughed up a bit if you are willing to head out on such an adventure, and what seemed before like the stench of struggle and challenge and dirt will change to the sweet aroma of deep relationship, satisfaction, and beauty, and probably some of the best memories of your life.

Too much? Well it’s true even if it is a little sentimental. So go on a trip or apply to be on staff already. Then you too can smell like the packs, and like it.