Trailwalker/Update

I am sorry it has taken so long for me to update my blog since my last post. I have had a crazy busy couple of weeks, consisting of 3 consecutive days of camp with a local Christian school (where I spoke twice to the eleventh grade boys and hung out with the kids for the whole time I was there), work, teaching at our youth group for the past few weeks, leading two discipleship groups per week, hanging out with the kids, and "networking" with other Hong Kong youth pastors (this largely consisted of us staying up until 4:30 AM at camp playing cards and talking about life, in addition to some basketball in the park and another night discussion at camp which ended at the nice early hour of 1 AM). My ultimate frisbee league has also started, and my team, the Leadbeaters (an Australian possum which was thought to be extinct for many years until one was discovered in the 1960s or so) is 0-1-1. We have become a comeback team, letting our opponents go ahead early and making it exciting late, but so far we haven't had big enough comebacks to turn them into wins.

Another big development in my life the past couple of weeks is that I have been recruited to do something called the "Trailwalker" with some men from my church. The Trailwalker is a charity fundraising hike along a Hong Kong trail called the MacLahose Trail. The MacLehose is 100 km long. All 4 members of the team must do all 100 km (62 or so miles) together. Each team has 48 hours to complete the hike, but my team has set a goal of completing it in 24 hours. We went out last Saturday, which was my first day training with the team, for a hike of about 20 km (12.5 ish miles). This past Thursday night we went on a night hike, where it rained a lot (the rain wasn't part of the plan, but we walked through it anyway), to get used to hiking in the dark, since completing the MacLehose in 24 hours will require us to walk through the night. Yesterday (Saturday), we went on another hike, this one being 27 km (about 16 miles). We did yesterday's hike (on 2 days' rest) in 6.7 hours, which would put us on a 100 km pace of just under 25 hours. We still have a month and a half until the Trailwalker, but we have a lot of training to do in that time.