Pilgrims Progress

Let's start off with a little background information. Everyone is pretty much dead at retreat, including counselors and leaders. It was actually pretty sad. You can really tell all the kids and counselors were feeling pretty out of it. Kids looked apathetic about worship, counselors and leaders were sick and tired. It was like that on the first two days. Then comes the third day with Pilgrims Progress (truly was a kick in the butt).

So at the start of it, we all gathered in the chapel and they explained how we were all going by grade: seniors and juniors went together, sophomores, freshmen, 8th grade, and 7th grade. So roughly around 4 or 5 groups. I'm not sure how they grouped the younger classmen because I went with the seniors and juniors (I counseled the juniors). The counselors had to experience Pilgrims Progress with the students. They thought it would be a good idea. So the counselors that went with seniors and juniors were me, Terrance, Joy, and Michelle Park.

Station #1 Dead in Sin: At the first station, we saw Pastor Joshua, Andrew Kim UCR, Stella, and Priscilla Chung. From the start, they all look serious and pissed. First thing we do is start off with a memory verse. They gave us 3 minutes to memorize this verse about how sinners are of the devil, and the Son of Man came down to destroy the devil's works. Then Pastor Joshua would call us out (he wouldn't acknowledge us by name, so he called us "you") one by one at random and we'd have to say the words in the verse one by one in order. After multiple tries, we finally got it. After, they passed out a paper. On it were various sins such as Laziness, Pride, Lust, Self-Righteousness, etc. Then they gave us a blank piece of paper and a sharpie so that we could write the sin we are struggling with on the paper, and we attached the paper on our back. We formed a semi-circle, and there was a towel in the middle. One by one, each person had to kneel down on the towel in the middle of the group, and we all had to point at the person and scream out their sin. Sometimes Pastor Joshua made us say it one by one by ourselves, and for other people he'd make us scream it out in unison as a group. Already at this point, the seniors and juniors were pissed. It's pretty uncomfortable pointing at your own friends and yelling out their sin you know? But anyway, we got through it and they told us that because we are dead in our sin, we had to go to Hell, which was Station #2.

Station #2 Hell: We were instructed to walk to station 2 without talking. So as you can probably guess, there already was a lot of tension within the group. Station 2 was at the basketball courts which had no shade, so it portrayed Hell pretty well because it was pretty dang hot. At this station, there was Yom, Yohan (one of the seminar speakers), and Cara. Right when they see us walking towards the basketball courts, they yell at us telling us to hurry up and run and form two even lines. They gave us 10 seconds. Because we couldn't do it, they made us do a couple push-ups on the really hot ground. After, we spread out and did the "up downs" (you know in Remember the Titans where they shuffle their feet and when they blow the whistle, you have to go down and back up?). We did that for a while and it got pretty freaking tiring. Then we had to do suicides (everyone starts at the base line, then runs to first line and back, second line and back, etc.) a couple times. By this time, everyone is dehydrated, hot, and very irritable. After, we went in our lines, and they called one person at a time out again and we had to scream out our "My name is _____ and I struggle with ____" again. And then everyone had to point and scream out their name and their sin. As we kept doing it, Phil Kim got super frustrated and he just stopped. So Yohan got all up in his face and asked if he was special and why he wasn't doing it. Phil Kim said "I'm tired," so they made us roll the entire length of the basketball court and back. It doesn't sound that bad, but when you're dehydrated, it makes you pretty dizzy. So Albert Choi and Jewey started throwing up their breakfast. After, the counselors had to blind fold everyone. They were all in a line, grabbing the shoulders of the person in front of them, and the counselors had to lead them to Station 3 which was freaking far. The pathway had all these jacked up rocks everywhere, and it was all down hill. This was to symbolize the blind leading the blind, and that without Christ, you feel very alone, lost, helpless, hopeless, etc.

Station #3 Grace: Here, we saw Jinah JDSN, Andrew S Kim, and Jo Kim. As we led them their blind-folded, each were taken to the side and asked several questions about accepting Christ and whatnot. After the questions, they got to take their blindfolds off symbolizing that with Christ, they can see now. Then they had to memorize the verse Ephesians 2:8-9. After we all prayed together, Jinah JDSN instructs us to carry our "cross" until the rest of the Pilgrims Progress. They made us carry these poles over our shoulders, and off we went to station 4.

Station #4 Temptation: This station obviously portrays the Christian life where even after you accept Christ, you will still face many temptations. So right when we got there, we saw James Yang, Stella, and Ham. Right when we get there, the three of them are super nice asking questions like "Dude, how was it? Are you guys tired? Do you guys want some water?" So from the start, we were all kind of suspicious especially because all the other stations were super serious and mean to us. Terrance would ask "where do we sit?" and Stella responded with "Oh, you guys can sit anywhere you want." So it was just really weird. But right when the kids came in, the three of them went to them with water bottles asking if they want to drink some. All the kids of course gave in and started drinking. Keep in mind, at this point EVERYONE is dead tired and dehydrated. Also, we had no idea this was suppose to be a temptation stage. So as I observed, I noticed a lot of scary images. I still remember it... it's burned into my skull. One of my kids walked up to Stella and asked if he could drink some water. Stella said "Oh sure, he's a water bottle. Let me take your cross for you so you can drink some." RIGHT THERE, I started screaming to everyone "GET AWAY FROM THEM! THIS IS A TEMPTATION STAGE. DON'T DRINK THE WATER. JUST STAY AWAY AND SIT DOWN AND DON'T EVEN TALK TO THEM! AND HOLD ONTO YOUR CROSSES!" Then I saw an even scarier image. Stella said "Okay fine, you guys can carry your crosses but I'm worried you guys are dehydrated. How about you guys just lift up your heads, open your mouths, and I will pour the water into your mouths." So as you can imagine, I saw this scary image of Stella standing in the midst of all these thirsty kids heads back and mouths open, desperately trying to get some water. The kids looked so pathetic and desperate (like Christians being unable to discipline themselves from falling into sin) crowding around Stella trying to get some water. In the end, everyone had to do punishment because we all fell. They said if you drank water, ate a popsicle, or even sat down on the bench, you failed. So we had to do some more "up downs" with our crosses. After memorizing another memory verse, we took our crosses and walked over to Station 5.

Station #5 Christ's Humility: The last station brought everything together. As we approached station 5, we see the several leaders including Pastor Joshua again, Chris JDSN, Yongman, etc. We also see a huge circle of chairs, with buckets of water and soap in front of the chairs. Basically, we had to wash each other's feet. The way we did it was the counselors washed the seniors feet, seniors washed juniors feet, when sophomores came, the juniors washed the sophomore's feet, etc. kind of like a trickling down effect. As you can imagine, it was a mutual humbling experience for both the washer, and for the one being washed. To see your older brother/sister wash your own feet is just a weird feeling; let alone washing feet in general is weird. After washing each other's feet, we'd pray together. After I finished praying with my student, I would look around and I'd see students praying for students as they hugged each other. And for some reason, tears just started running down my face. Just the sight of two brothers/sisters coming together to pray for one another just filled me with so much happiness and joy. It was such a beautiful picture. Basically, this station symbolized humble servitude. Christ, our King, our Creator, our Power, came down as a lowly human being to SERVE US. So we got to have just a tiny little taste of what Christ went through as we served our younger brothers/sisters.

What hit me the most about Pilgrims Progress was the leader's debriefing meeting about it. Basically, every leader who was leading the Pilgrims Progress had a very hard time. During the first and second group it was okay, but after doing it for 4 or 5 groups, it does something to you, you know? Like Yom talked about how in his station (Hell), screaming and yelling at the kids like it's boot camp obviously made him feel like crap. Andrew Kim UCR making all the kids scream out their peers' sins and just seeing their angry emotions. Andrew took it hard. But James Yang hit me the most. He was at the temptation station. He basically shared how it was so easy and fun to deceive the first two groups who came. But after seeing group after group failing and seeing how easy it was, it broke his heart more and more. He basically saw how easy it was for us to be distracted away from our mission and how easily we give in to our temptations. Basically, he said it was analogous to how God sees Christians and how it must break his heart every time we buy into temptation. And I even thought of myself. I didn't take a sip of the ice cold refreshing water, I held my cross till the end, yet I still failed because I sat down on the bench. Satan is so clever that he can make you fall even when you don't know it. And we are so stupid and oblivious that we fail ALL the time.

But yeah, that's pretty much it. Didn't expect to write so much, but there was so much to tell. Hope this was encouraging!