Treasure Hunts and Body Parts

So tonight at our leaders' meeting, we did a treasure hunt.  No, we didn't find buried treasure.  It's a kind of prayer walk where before hand you intentionally ask God to show you clues about who you should talk to--words, phrases, pictures, places, whatever.  Now, I have only done this once before, about 2 summers ago.  So I was kind of scared.  Excited, but scared.

So in our listening time, I got pictures of things like wood.  Specifically rugged wood, probably in association with the seminary building that shares Hope's campus.  And benches.  And orange juice.  (Yes, orange juice.)  We grouped off and headed out.  I headed out with Sandy and Carl.

We come to our first intersection.  Sandy asks, 'Left, right, or straight?'  None of us answers.  Sandy answers her own question with, 'Diagonal?' Carl and I go, 'I was just thinking that!'  And so diagonal across the intersection we go.  Love it.  Wasn't even an option and all three of us got the same message...

And we tromp off diagonally towards the heart of campus.  My attention is captured by a dude about a block away, carrying something.  He takes a drink of whatever he's carrying.  I go, if that's orange juice...!  But I never found out--he was too far away and I was too chicken to chase after him.

But we continue our way to the seminary building, pausing, listening, praying, etc.  I ask if there are benches along the road by the seminary.  Sandy says that there are on the other side.  So we circle back around to the other side.  Sandy points me to the benches, and I know before I see them which ones she's talking about and I run off across the lawn because THOSE ARE THE BENCHES.  The wood is old and rugged, and there are trees, specifically pine (which Sandy had gotten as one of her clues), next to them.  Leaves overhead was something else that had come up in my listening time but wasn't clear enough or seem to be the focus of the image.  So I knew that was the place.  So we sat down.  And we wait.  And I'm like, Great.  Here we are, sitting, in a corner, in the dark.  We're going to regroup and we're going to have nothing to say about who we talked to.  But I was so sure this was the place.  So I waited.  We waited.  A few minutes pass, and a pair of people walks by and catches my eye.  Sandy says, that guy's wearing a black coat (one of her clues).  I ask if she wants to go after him.  She says, Yes.  So we sprint across the lawn, chasing these guys down.  And as we do, my face just breaks out into this huge grin.  I have a peace and a confidence and an excitement that this is what we're supposed to be doing.  We talk to him, and we pray for him and his bad hip.  He seemed a little...suprised at what we were doing, but not freaked out.  Kind of curious.  If he had more time, and if we had more time, I would have liked to ask him if he was involved in a bible study/how his spiritual life was.  Alas, I didn't.  But Sandy has his name and maybe I'll track down his email address and see how he is later on. *shrug*

We all regroup and swap stories and it's all really cool to see how the really random clues like 'flowers' manifested themselves in stories of prayer and talking and risk-taking.  I had fun.  But I think the coolest thing was that in our group, we each got pieces of the puzzle.  We needed each other to confirm what may or may not be nudges of the Holy Spirit, and we needed all of us to figure out who to talk to.  It was really cool.  Looking foward to doing it again. =)