Fear Factor Nights in Rhinelander and Crandon

Always a crowd pleaser, our annual gross out night known as Fear Factor was just held last week. The first event is the Happy Meal Smoothie! Trust me it's as gross as it sounds! I have two volunteers come forward for the seemingly harmless task of eating a happy meal. Putting out the fries, cheeseburger, apple dippers, and drink (no I didn't make them eat the toy) they were still feeling pretty good - until I brought out the blender! Everything, except the toy, was thrown into the jar and I hit "frappe"! I've had this before, but the thing that made it so gross this time was actually the apples! They didn't blend up all that great and were pretty chunky!!!

After that we had our food relay. We had 13 different items in paper bags ranging from pretty good to down right disgusting. The teens had to run up and grab the bag closest to them and then eat/drink whatever was in the bag! The good consisted of jello snack packs, bottle of coke, and chocolate. The bad consisted of SPAM, oysters, beets, artichoke hearts, and baby food. Not really gross but extremely hard to get down was peanut butter (chunky of course), frosting, and a whole lot of crackers.

The games are always fun, but we also had an awesome time of worship and learning last night. My message topic was on Faith and I used Abraham as my example. When God called him to sacrifice his son Isaac, Abraham had so much faith that God would provide. I used that passage to give a good example of faith. Then in Mark 6 the people's lack of faith in Jesus resulted in Him not performing major miracles or amazing teaching. We looked at how we need to "rest" in the grace of God and trust Him to do what He says He will do. We ended the night with an invitation for the teens to let go of their fears that have been holding them back. We did the trust fall - where you stand on an object, cross your arms and fall straight back. Before and during their fall I instructed them to think about where their faith was weak and give that over to God. Three teens came forward and did the exercise and it was pretty powerful.