Between 4:00 and 5:30 in the late afternoon of Friday, May 16, 2008, seven of St. Mark’s youth and their families gathered for a sumptuous buffet of assorted subs, veggies and chips, before heading across downtown Williamsport to see “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.” Expectations were high and were met by this exciting film. (If you’ve read the books, there are a few changes—but the main points remain the same.)

Afterwards, Devin, Riley, Christina, Hannah, Sara, Corey, Declan, Nick, Sharon, Bernadette, Kirk and Pastor Elkin returned to the church and were “locked-in” for the night. There were puzzles and word games based on the movie to figure out. After snacks were served, we had a discussion on the various events and characters in the film and how they relate to our lives as Christians. According to our students, faith played a very important role in the success of the heroes’ struggle; Lucy’s older siblings and a new character were, at times, cast in the role of the doubting Thomas; that determination is needed to follow God and do the right thing; and that often times there’s a price to be paid for doing the right thing, be it comfort, ridicule, relationships or even death.

As everyone started to droop, it was time to get up and move around. So, the youth and two mentors set out on a building-wide scavenger hunt, searching for important talismans from Narnia and gathering tokens with pictures of and biblical quotes pertaining to them, and clues for their next item. We don’t have very observant students. They didn’t see half the objects—but did manage to collect all their tokens!!

At midnight, we had a showing of “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium” and then it was off to bed—or sleeping bag, if you prefer. Our fearless leaders were up and awake and preparing for the day by 7:00. They ruthlessly routed out the rest of the crew for breakfast around 7:45—and that took a lot of routing!! Breakfast was finished and we had time for a further Bible study, in relation to the film, before Morning Prayer.

After everyone had cleaned up their areas and packed, it was up to the middle school room to begin the mural. We lost a few students to soccer, but gained Emily as the morning drew to a close. Parts of the mural remain to he completed by those unable to join us that weekend.

When asked what they got out of the weekend, the most popular answer was that they learned a lot about making connections between the Bible and movies and they got to know everyone better. Would they like to do it again? Uh—yeah!