I was not supposed to be there… but for whatever reason the Aaby family decided on a great adventure yesterday and drove to Spokane to greet the teams coming back from Idaho and Montana for the Landing!  Youthmark has assigned “Leads” for each of the regions.  So, where I do the launch at each place I also have one of my Leads doing it with me.  This Youth Pastor is one of the guys going on one of the trips in this region; then, on the back end this Lead does the Landing (because I am normally off to the next launch). So, we were covered in terms of leadership, but this was going to be my only chance at a “Group” debrief besides the very last one this summer (last week I landed the Chehalis group, but that was just one team, whereas this week there were seven).

Late Friday night I was feeling very excited about the teams and I just lob-tossed it out to Elisabeth, “feel like a road trip to Spokane tomorrow?”  We discussed it at length and decided to sleep on it.  There were many positives about doing it and a few potential negatives.

In the morning we still uncertain about doing it or not (that’s a long trip for the kids).  And ultimately at 9:15 AM decided to do it.  We were out by 10:00 AM and in Spokane Valley by 3:00 PM (including a couple short stops)–teams arrived at about 3:30.

Our kids were fantastic and were rewarded by watching some great fireworks on the way back through Ritzville, Moses Lake and Vantage!

Below are some pics of the Landing, I’m sure I’ll post more about it later and probably at my Youthmark.com blog.

Grace,
Brian