My eyes were focused on the snow-capped mountains surrounding me as the sun glistened over the top of Twin Sister’s peaks in the Rocky Mountain National Park near Estes Park, Colorado. I was amazed that I was actually in a place I had only before dreamed of. I had been anxious to get on a mountain ever since my cousin had invited me to go with his church to a youth camp in the Rockies about a month earlier. Now I found myself having to wait impatiently to get on that mountain.

I was not paying much attention to the scripture discussion everyone was having around me. We had arrived the night before, and every morning was spent in sessions and Bible study. I had paid some attention to the lesson, but it drifted to the back of my mind the more my eyes wandered off to the mountains. And I really didn’t need to pay much attention to the lesson. I had heard this message so many times in church and Sunday school. They were discussing the passage in Matthew 6:25 and 26 which says, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?"

I had grown up in church and my family rarely missed a Sunday morning or Wednesday night. I enjoyed going to church, and would always learn a lot, but it seemed like some things were becoming redundant. It felt like I was just going through the motions, and hearing things that I already knew in my mind. And studying scripture was the last thing on my mind at the moment. Once the lesson was over, all that stood in the way of climbing the mountain was lunch. That would not be as big of a problem.

After lunch, a group of 10 of us met on the porch of the old weather-beaten white chapel near the front of the camp. The trailhead was a mile west of the chapel, so we had to hike along side a curvy mountain road in the middle of the day. By the time we arrived to the trailhead, the sun was directly above, and we were already fatigued from the small uphill hike.

Everyone in my hiking group had been to the Rockies before, and no one seemed to be as pumped as I was. We began hiking, and I took the lead in an effort to appear manly in front of the young ladies in the group. I guess those television commercials about mountain men getting women had influenced me. My focus was on impressing the girls. After about five minutes, my fourteen year-old body realized that it could not keep going at my desired pace. So I dropped back to where the main part of the group was. I realized that the guys that stayed back in the main group with the girls were actually getting to talk to them. That seemed to make a better impression than trying to be macho.

About 2 hours and 30 minutes into the hike, we noticed some dark clouds coming over the mountain range across from Twin Peaks. You could see streaks of rain coming down in the distance. It seemed to be a few miles away, and we did not think it would even reach our mountain within the hour. We naively guessed that it would take about 30 minutes to get to the top, but we were not even to the tree line yet. Fifteen minutes after noticing the clouds, the storm struck the mountain.

Lighting was flashing all around us. Many of the trees surrounding us were splintered and had large burn signs from past storms. And the rain that we saw in the distance was not rain at all. Golf-ball size hail was painfully showering down on us as we tried to find shelter in the center of the trail. Several guys, including me, got the idea to use our bodies to shield the girls from the hail. They thought it was nice, but it turned out to be a stupid idea. The hail caused so many bruises, that I had to sleep on my stomach that night. Once the hail and lightning let up, we decided it would be best to head back to camp. By the time we got off of the mountain, the girls quickly forgot about our painful sacrifice.

This hike was not at all what I expected. I was extremely disappointed. It was definitely adventurous, but did not end the way I had expected it to. However, I knew that tomorrow was a new day, and that there would be another opportunity to conquer the Twin Sisters.

Tuesday morning flew by faster than I expected it to. Actually lunch was harder to get through than the Bible study the morning before. The food at this camp was probably the worst I have ever had. The fake Cheetos cheese puffs tasted like Styrofoam packaging. I ended up having a wilted lettuce salad with tomato slices that fell apart when I tried to pick them up with my fork.

We hit the trail at 1 pm. This time we caught a ride to the trailhead with one of the camp directors. This group had about 20 people in it, and did not include the people that had gone on the horrendous hail hike. Martin, a fifteen year-old from Mexico, was hiking in the front of the group with me. We both decided to take a faster pace and leave the group behind. One of the leaders told us to be back at the bottom of the trail by five so that we could make it back to camp in time for dinner. We hiked for about 3 hours until we finally reached the tree line and we could finally see the peaks clearly.

The peak was much wider and rockier than I had expected. We used as much energy as we had to push our exhausted legs up to the end of the trail. The final set of switchbacks seemed to take forever. We looked back at the tree line when we got to the top of the trail, and saw some of the leaders from our group signaling us to head back for dinner. I was not about to head back and miss out on such an amazing view just so I could eat a crappy dinner that I had no desire to eat. We had come too far.

The view from the top was probably the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life. The mountain range stretched for miles, and most of the surrounding peaks were snow-capped even though it was summer. Lots of rivers snaked below us, and fed into different lakes in the area. We laid down on our stomachs on the edge of one of the cliffs on the face of the peak and tried to locate our camp. The little white chapel looked like a small box right beside a puddle.

As I took in the view, I turned to Martin and said, "Man, isn’t God amazing. He made all of this-- man, it just blows me away." Standing on the top of that mountain made me realize God’s magnificent glory and power. Martin asked if I wanted to pray while we were there. That was exactly what I had been thinking and wanting to do. We prayed for about five minutes and then decided to head back down the mountain since it was getting close to five.

Before we had left the porch of the chapel, the trail guides had advised us to stay on the trail. We figured that now that we had conquered such a large mountain, we could take some short cuts off of the trail. This saved a lot of time in the switchbacks above the tree line and gave us hope that we would actually make it back to the camp in time for the evening service and bible study. When we hit the tree line, we could see the next switchback below us, so we took off straight down the side. When we hit the next switchback, we spotted the trail below us again. We took off through the brush again.

When we hit the trail once again, we decided not to push our luck anymore and head down the trail like we had been told. The trail seemed to wind and looked more and more overgrown the more we walked down it. We spent about 10 minutes on it without hitting a switchback. Finally, the trail just seemed to end with a big rock. Realizing that this was not the trail, we turned around to retrace our steps. There was no clear trail behind us! It was just brush, trees, and animal droppings. We were lost!

Not only were we lost, we were also almost out of water, we only had about two hours and thirty minutes before darkness would envelope the mountain, and the temperature would drop about 20 or 30 degrees. We were both wearing soaking wet t-shirts and shorts. We had packed no compass, no map, no flashlight, no matches, no blankets, and no food. I did have my wallet, but that was useless on the mountain.

Being the expert mountain men that we were, we decided to head up the mountain and try to find the real trail. We did not know until we talked to one of the camp directors after we got off the mountain, that when you go up the side of a mountain through sparse brush and trees, you tend to veer towards the right. This was a very bad plan that lasted for about 15 minutes. That was just enough time to run out of water and waste more energy than we had to spare. Martin was in much better shape than I was, so he climbed a lightning toasted tree to see if he could find some bearings while I rested on a rotten log. My legs had never burned so bad in my life.

Given the fact that we were out of water, and that Martin could not locate any type of landmark, we decided to head straight down the mountain. Keep in mind that the problem of veering off to the right also occurs when going down a mountain. This was much easier on my legs, and I could move at a much faster pace. By this time we had lost track of time because we had stopped taking the time to get our watches out of our backpacks. The brush and trees seemed to blend together the more we went on. We could see the sun getting lower and lower in the sky, and it began to really hit us that we did not have the things we needed to stay overnight on the mountain. We had to get off before dark.

Martin wanted to stop and pray, but I told him that I had been praying ever since we realized we were lost. I knew God would want us to press on, and he didn’t expect us to stop. There was no doubt in my mind that he was with us, even though the situation seemed so bad.

When the sun was just above the horizon, I started to get dizzy and lightheaded. My tongue was parched, and my mouth was completely dry. I knew that if I stopped it would just get worse, but I also knew that I was on the verge of dehydration and I needed to find water fast. About twenty minutes later, we heard what sounded like water rushing in the brush about a hundred yards away from us. We ran as fast as our dead legs could take us.

The stream looked just like a scene from an Ozarka water commercial. Throwing all fear of pollution I buried my head in the ice cold, clear water and drank like an animal. I drank for about 2 minutes, and then looked up and saw that the sun was slowly falling below the gorgeous horizon. We filled up one of our bottles, and then we took off down the side of the mountain, following the stream. Given the urgency of our predicament, we ran as fast as we could through the thorn-filled brush. I tripped about every 30 feet and collected some nasty cuts, but it really did not matter. I was determined to get off of this mountain. I did not want to sleep with bears or mountain lions in the cold.

The sunset was probably one of the prettiest I ever had a chance to see, but that was the last thing on my mind. The sun had disappeared, and you could feel the temperature dropping. The creek even disappeared underground, but we pressed on. Martin was about 30 feet ahead of me, so he was the first to see the large cabin. We found civilization as the sky began to get dark!

We had managed to end up on the wrong side of the mountain. It turned out that the cabin was part of a large health camp that had a ton of food left over from dinner. I don’t know if it was my hunger, but the barbeque chicken they served us was probably the best I have ever had. It was definitely a nice break from the camp food at our camp. Skipping dinner back at camp definitely paid off. The camp directors called our camp and arranged for them to come pick us up. On our trip back, we learned that there were search parties and helicopters out searching for us on the wrong side of the mountain. We also learned that we could have contracted a parasite for life by drinking the water out of the creek. Thank God that I did not have a parasite. I also learned that the camp had not contacted my mom. This was a good thing because she would have probably been on the first flight on Colorado. We learned that the camp had canceled the service that night and spent the evening praying for us. When we arrived, the girls went crazy. We were definitely the most popular guys for the rest of the week. It was definitely my five minutes of fame. However, If I did it all again, I think I would have stayed on the trail.

The next morning’s bible study was amazing. The passages jumped out at me, even though I had heard them hundreds of times before. Before I was lost on that mountain, I was totally taking all that God had done for me for granted. Even climbing the mountain the first day, I was too focused on myself and on impressing girls. When we were in the midst of the hailstorm, I did not even think to pray to God for protection. Little did I know that he had a plan for me, just like Jeremiah 29:11 says. After climbing the mountain and getting lost, I could no longer take God for granted. I now knew that He was in control, and would give me what I needed, when I needed it, and teach me what I needed to be taught when I needed to be taught it.

When I originally wrote this paper, the words just flowed onto the paper, and I had no trouble communicating what I wanted to say. However, I think by doing the revision, I was able to draw out themes that are supposed to be the core of the paper, and are supposed to show a life-changing experience in my life.

I originally wrote on this topic when I was writing my college essays for admissions applications. I basically had to fit the story onto one page. When I wrote this paper, I decided to start from scratch and not reference my original papers because the original message in my admissions papers lacked depth and content. Comparing the two stories really showed me how much I had grown in my writing style and content.

I chose to revise this paper because it was a defining point in my life, and is a story that shows my journey and my desire to grow in my spiritual life. When I revised it, I tried to bring out the parts of the paper that accented the themes and the things I learned throughout the whole experience. I accentuated the conclusion to draw attention to the part God played in this whole experience and in my life as a whole.

I personally wanted to contact Martin, the guy I was lost with, and interview him about the experience, but I was not able to find him. I would like to talk to him someday and find out what he was thinking throughout the whole event, and if it was a significant point in his life.

The most frustrating thing about writing this paper and revising it was the space restrictions. There was so much to the story that I had to summarize or leave out that could have been beneficial to the themes included. However, the restrictions forced me to pick out the scenes and parts that were most relevant and most supportive of the themes of the story.