Mission Impossible 2024 Champions!

We are the champions! On Saturday night, Isaiah, Noura, Sylvie, and I [Pastor Jacob] drove to Camp Men-O-Lan, where we competed against six other youth groups from  around Mosaic Mennonite Conference in an event called Mission Impossible.

We’ve done this before, and always finished near the back of the pack. But this year, we were determined to win. We raced out into the dark woods, looking for the glow of the lamps that marked the four stations we needed to visit. Whenever we spotted one, we’d head straight for it, crashing through the undergrowth.

All of us got scratched and bruised. Isaiah tripped on a rock and wiped out. But we knew that a little pain was nothing compared to the glory we would bring to Ambler Mennonite Church with a win. When we arrived back at our starting point, exhausted and panting for breath, we saw that we were the first to return.

All we needed to do was give the four objects we had collected to the organizers. We reached into our bag and fished out the canoeing helmet, the life jacket, and the springy thing. But where was the pool noodle? We’d dropped it in the woods! We’d have to go back for it!

We sprinted out into the night again, back to the fourth station. We were almost there when we were suddenly lit up by the beam of a flashlight. It was a guard! We were caught!

“For your punishment,” he said, “you need to recite the alphabet backward.”

We looked at each other. “Z?” I said. “Y?” Isaiah said. But Sylvie had a strange wild look in her eyes. “ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA” she shouted in one breath.

We looked at her in disbelief. Where had she learned this? “My uncle told me I couldn’t learn the alphabet backward,” she said. “So I did.”

With that, we were free to run again. We grabbed the noodle and thundered back to the start. And were still there ten minutes before anyone else.

Ambler Mennonite Church: Champions!