GMS 2003 (1)

At the start of the summer of 2003 I had never set foot in a frat house. Hard to believe now! I was living in southern Vermont, but decided to come back north and return to school. I quit my job in June instead of waiting until fall so I could help with the first annual Green Mountain Summer with The Navigators. I put in my last day of work, and then drove up to Burlington a day or two later and moved into this house along with a bunch of other college students and recent grads. I wasn't so recent a grad; I was the oldest at 28, but I tried not to be too public about that.

Green Mountian Summer is a Christian training program for college students. Learning to "know Christ and make Him known". It was easily the most fun summer of my life. It consisted of teams of 4 or 5, one of them being the team leader (I was one of those). The regulars got jobs in the area, working about 40 hours a week, and the team leaders worked part time. I didn't get an official job because I was helping a little extra behind the scenes, and also took it upon myself (yeah, what a sacrifice, huh?) to fulfill the promise of sailing that was made in the brochure! Two fraternity houses were rented for the summer to house all the students. One of them was Lambda Iota, which is the one I stayed in.


When we arrived there was quite a lot of cleanup to do:





and while we were there we tried to leave the house in much nicer condition than we found it:


On Sunday evenings we had a praise and worship night in the Founders Room, with a different guest speaker each time:

Here's all the participants that helped with the music. Philip is seen playing the trumpet by ear:

This is a car that was abandoned by a frat guy that moved away. The fraternity brothers that were staying in the house for the summer called him and asked what he wanted to do with the car. He said just have it hauled away. So of course they decided to smash it first. Some of the Christians staying in the house found out about this and joined in. This was the ice breaker that seemed to start a neat relationship that neither the frat guys nor the Navs students will forget. Unfortunately this relationship proved difficult to duplicate in 2004, and in 2005 the Navs decided not to rent Lambda Iota, but they might come back in 2006 and make another go of it.

The car smashing became sort of a yearly tradition after that. I found another car for 2004 (another Taurus!) and in 2005 I provided my own Jetta for the cause.



Above is frat guys and friends Rob, Halsey, Emily, Ben, and Ned. I still see Rob and Ned quite a bit. Below is Scott, Ben, someone I don't know, Chuck I think, and is that Wally on the right?