The Cult Experience
BASICALLY. i'm home from camp early. why? because it was a cult. we got out of the car and these older women *not to say I don't love old people because I actually quite adore them* attacked us and started giving us all these hugs and were really affectionate. Kayce, my friend from church and i looked at each other and were REALLY scared.
then dinner happened. you had to be in really nice clothes and if you weren't (all of our group because we literally pulled in the drive way 5 minutes before dinner started) they looked at you and said somehting that totally made you feel bad like "you really should have worn somehting nicer than that" or "i wish next time you look more presentable". no joke. they made me and kayce cry by the time we got back to the cabin. we were so sad.
then worship time. they had call to worships and "scripture readings" that were interpretations of the bible. don't get me wrong- i'm totally cool with bible interpretations because they let you think a lil differently than you probalby would have ever thought. but these bible readings were twisting the bible SO much that they said "if you don't worship like us, dress like us, and act like us, you will go to hell" and that wasn't really cool. at all. it made me and kayce cry more. we wanted to go home. we "illegally" called our parents by hiding behind a bush and using our cell phones that weren't even suppose to come to camp. *hehe* but by doing that we were "giong to hell". we told our parents what was happening and we told them we wanted to go home. my mom and dad are both working at a girl scout twilight camp this week so it was practically impossible for them to help, but Dick, kayce's dad was able to come get us if we called on monday morning saying that for sure we wanted to go home. we had to worship until 11 pm on sunday night, then we had to go to bed by 11:30. they locked us in. if there was a fire, we'd be dead because we were LOCKED in. no way out. (scary?!?!?! i think so)
MONDAY MORNING- had to wake up at 6:30 and then have "quiet hour" which was really only around 20 mins at 7. the "quiet hour" was not really that, but instead reading a page out of our "handbook" and praying that we would understand it and accept it. the thing we read said that "if you don't pray every morning RIGHT when you wake up, you will go to hell" kayce and i didn't really like that. its one thing to believe that people that don't accept christ as their saviour are going to hell, vs. TELLING them they will. (off note kinda= in my opinion .... ANY CHRISTIAN OF ANY SORT WILL GO TO HEAVEN... meaning i don't HAVE to pray in the morning if i don't want to... but i CAN.... its a PERSONAL DECISION that you and the Lord make TOGETHER.... not something that you do out of fear of going to hell. so anyways that's my two cents on that. feel free to debate in a comment but yeah that's what i think/believe/feel/trust) kayce and i left a lil early though to go and speak with our pastor that was there with us, phil. we told him what we felt, and how we wanted to go home... he told us to just "meet the people and you'll enjoy it more". i had no doubt that some of those people weren't freaks and they were nice people, but it wasn't the people i was there for. i was there to learn christian leadership and i was being forced to practically change my religion. *yick* so our pastor didn't help us.
kayce and i went to breakfast and nearly died because we didn't sit up "straight" enough and we had to stand up in front of the whole camp and apologize. wow. strict mucho? ich denke das. (aka ya) we snuck off for a sec, kayce called her dad, and he was on his way to rescue us. kayce nor i had been so excited until that little moment in time... ohhhh the smiles we had. anyways... it was a 5 hour drive down to oregon so we still had a while until we were really rescued. that sucked.
that meant we had to go to the classes that we were signed up for. these classes i thought were going to be classes on how to be a good "christian leader". how wrong i was. they were classes on the history of this organization "christian endeavor". there's a lot of stuff on the web about it (Click) it's CRAZY.we didn't learn anything about jesus, god or the holy spirit. we didn't learn parables, or teachings of christ. we didn't learn about HOW to be a leader. we learned that francis e. clark founded christian endeavor in williston congregational church in portland maine on february 2, 1881. SEE?!?!?!!?!?!?!? that's from ONE DAY OF BRAIN WASHING. that is FOREVER engraved in my head because they said it so many times and they wouldn't let us eat lunch until we told them that. IT WAS SCARY and the worst was that it wasn't over... it was only monday.
so then we had lunch and had a lil activity thta wasnt that bad, then free time, and then dick came and rescued us. but if we had stayed they would have made us take a test on friday and only if we passed would be recieve a degree and we would be allowed to be "disciples of christ", we had to memorize and recite a pledge for the deans, we had to sign a paper and follow these 9 steps to heaven.
i'm glad dick rescued me. i'm glad i'm home. *yay*. i'm happy now. oh yeah- got home about 11 pm last night.
comment if you want. but i probably won't respond tonight because i'm kinda tired. hmmmmm....i'm gunna go watch a really funny movie called american pie 2 and laugh a lot- and i'm really looking forward to friday night because i'm gunna hang out with some TIGHT people that i haven't seen in a while. but now- it it time for me to go my friends. luv ya'll and i'm so happy that i don't tell all of you that you're going to hell. because i believe there is hope for everyone. and i luv ya~Alexis
ps- feel free to comment if you want, but no responses until at least 10 pm at the earliest because of AMERICAN PIE!!! (numma 2)bye.