On Monday, July 31, I received a phone call from Grant at KAKO mine asking if I wanted to go over there to attend a student religious retreat. I said, yeah, and the next day Grant picked me up with his airplane at the airport. On the way over Grant asked me if I had ever been to Willow Mine and I said, no. When we passed over KAKO I noticed they were building another house, and that they had dug ponds for the mining machines. As we were landing I also noticed that the runway was crooked.

When I signed in at the dining room Grant's wife put a piece of paper on my back and I had to guess what it was until I got it. Then we had to divide into two groups and separated on two sides of the room. Grant and Kim then spread a blanket between the two groups. Then each group put one or two people on each side of the blanket and the other people had to guess who they were. When it was my turn I had a hard time guessing their names because I hardly knew anybody. We played this and other games so we could get to know each other. At the end of these games, I grabbed a Pepsi and went back to the dining room where I got ready for supper. After that Grant's wife took out her guitar and started to sing some bible songs. Then we had free time, so I went to the ping pong room to watch some people play ping pong. Then I played cards with some people and ate popcorn. We played until 11:50 P.M. when we had to put the games away and prepared for bed. Some of the boys told bed time stories. Then we went to sleep around 1:30 A. M.

The next morning after we cleaned up the mess, we sat down and had pancakes. Later Grant sent us on a scavenger hunt where we had to find things on a list. This was to be our lunch ticket so we could eat lunch. We found everything except something that crawls and went in for lunch which was spaghetti and meatballs. After lunch Grant took us on a hike to the top of a nearby mountain. Two other boys from Russian Mission and I reached the top before everybody else. There we picked blueberries and had a little berry fight. We were the first ones to get back down the mountain. When we returned Grant said we had to make hats out of anything we could find outdoors. I made my hat out of willow branches. When the girls were done with their hats they put them on the table where some bugs climbed off them.

Later that night we decided we would scare the girls in their bunk houses. But we had to wait until 12:30 A. M. to scare the girls. When the other boys came over from their bunkhouses we sneaked over to where the girls were sleeping. We had to run all the way around and walk in the wet grass and wet bushes. As we approached the girls' bunkhouse we saw them coming out the door. So a few of us hid nearby and watched them slowly move closer while the other boys hid further away. But somehow the girls heard us and took off in the direction where the rest of the boys were waiting. As they were running the boys jumped out and scared the girl's. Then we all walked over to where Barney and Grant had made a camp fire. We found out that Grant had set the whole thing up so both the girls and boys would try to scare each other! He sure fooled us!

The next morning after breakfast and a couple movies about Jesus, Grant sent us on another treasure hunt where we had to follow a map around the houses and walk all the way down the runway where we had to wait for everybody to reach a bucket with a message in it that said to return to the dining room for a treat. We all ran back and when we reached the dining room Grant was waiting for us. He then brought us to another house where he made us ask him twenty questions before we could get our ticket's for a Snickers candy bar. After lunch we had a contest for the best looking and most creative hats we had made the day before. Then we sang more songs and played football until people started to leave. First Bethel left, then Russian Mission, Mountain Village, and finally me.

So that was the best thing that happened to me this summer, and it sure helped me escape from Marshall's boredom.