Camping With Tiago

Over the last few weeks I had been trying to recruit the guys in the 2 house churches and 1 small group that we participate in to go on a camping trip. I thought that a little get-away would be a good bonding time for us. Most of the guys (7 of us in total) where excited about it. As time for the trip got closer most of the guys had to bail out due to work or being sick.

So, it ended up just being me and Tiago (Chee-a-Go). We went to the waterfalls where we had a house church meeting a few weeks ago. Not being regular outdoors men we don't own any camping equipment. We had to borrow a tent from Matt Rehbein and sleeping bags from the Blume family. It was a great time to go camping. We were the only people at the site until Saturday morning. That gave us free reign on whatever without having others interrupt us. It was the ideal situation.

We weren't familiar with Matt's tent, so we took pictures of the assembling process just in case we couldn't get it broken down! It was really fun - and easier than expected!


We spent most of our 24 hour camping trip (Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon) talking about God's creation and how small we are in the grand scheme of things. The nature that we experienced was awe-inspiring. The trees, the water, the flowers, the animals (little wolf-like creatures and monkeys) and the night time sky really blessed us. Here are a couple of pictures of the camping area that we enjoyed.


Tiago and I really had a great time grilling hotdogs in the dark and making "Smores". It was his first "Smores" experience. I was glad to accommodate! We are moving from Summer into Fall, so nights and mornings are a little chillier. We appreciated the warm, relaxing fire in the evening.

Tiago warming himself by the fire.

Munching on "Smores"!

The place where we went has 5 waterfalls. I believe that you can jump off the first 4 (and I did jump from the 2nd one!), but the last is pretty large and dangerous. We hiked down a trail on Saturday morning to get a first-hand look at this monster of a waterfall. It looked like something out of an adventure film. It was, along with most everything else we saw, incredible!

I am standing next to a zip-line that goes over the 5th waterfall.

This 5th waterfall is just over 108 feet tall and the water is almost 40 feet deep! Needless to say there was no jumping off this one!

Tiago and I had an amazing time that blessed and grew our friendship. We plan on taking another trip like this one in the future, but with more of our buddies.

Please keep Tiago and his search for Jesus in your prayers. He is an amazing young man with many talents. I know that one day he will do wonderful things for the Kingdom!