back to the mines

Saturdays have been set aside for Team Sublett family adventures lately. We’ve hiked a couple of nice little hikes, and everyone has had fun. But I gave the fam the day off this past Saturday. I spent a day with some of the up and coming leaders in our life, and I really worked them hard. There was lots of grunting, a good bit of bruising and scaping, and I’m fairly certain there was some gnashing of teeth.

I took 7 hearty young adventurers caving in one of the caves I know best–Bear Cave, near Derry, PA. I’ve spent countless hours exploring and delving deep. It’s the 6th longest cave in PA, and we covered most of it in our 3+ hour underground journey.

We crawled all the crawls we could find, sometimes inching our way on our bellies, our shoulders touching the walls on both sides, arms stretched out ahead of us so they wouldn’t wedge us in. We climbed up Suicide Pass and wiggled our way through Backbreaker Pass. We slid through the Worm Hole and over Coffin Rock. We eventually made our way back through the Keyhole, dropping down to the water that runs through the cave, slipping back to the Calcite waterfall and the effective end of the cave.

There were 5 young men, 2 young ladies, and one me. They’re all leaders or former students in our youth ministry. It was refreshing and challenging to get back underground. I got to put my cave memory to the test (I passed) and exercise some long-unused caving muscles. We chased lots of fears and phobias along the way–fear of the dark, or close spaces, of spiders and mud and getting lost…

Do you know what I liked most? Simple: seeing young men and women who are passionate about their relationship with Jesus growing in leadership. I loved the fact that I got to spend 9 hours of intense time with these folks, seeing how they react under pressure, watching them encourage and cheer each other on, listening to their stories, laughing at their jokes, observing how they truly live.

Last Saturday I took a day to get back to the mines, and I have to say I love my job!