JD Dufresne                                                                            3/25/08

Last year I went to Steubenville East with my 3 teenage sons.  If you’ve never been I have to tell you it’s something you have to experience.  It’s a 3 day event for High School aged youth.  It features an immense circus style tent with praise and worship and adoration.  Many of the youth have experiences at adoration which profoundly change their lives. There are long lines for reconciliation during the entire event.  There are inspirational talks and a rock band playing great Christian music.  The students wear colored t-shirts from their parishes and sing and dance throughout the event.  The accommodations are a little rustic and it’s always incredibly hot and humid, but it’s worth the trip. 

After the long weekend we boarded the bus for the ride home.  As usual everyone was a little tired, but the mood was very good.  The bus ride home is always interesting as the youth are much more open and chatty with their new friends they’ve made over the weekend.  Our bus driver was the same one who had taken us to the event in the first place.  He had gotten lost on the ride to the event and had apologized and said he had no idea what had come over him.  The town where the event takes places is an old New England enclave. It has a few one-way streets, sharp curves and bridges which a large bus can’t negotiate.  After a few wrong turns we made it to the event safe and sound. 

On our return trip our youth group leader instructed the bus driver to stop at a specific ice cream shop on the way home.  It’s a part of the tradition of the trip as it is where everyone gets a final chance to socialize within the larger group.  Our bus driver went in the wrong direction and we missed our stop.  Someone on the bus knew of an even better location for a stop, but our bus driver missed that one as well.  After about an hour into the trip the bus driver pulled onto the side of the busy two lane highway we were on.  The ice cream shack he stopped at was so small I hadn’t even noticed it was there.  The place was dusty and the bus leaned over awkwardly on the overgrown grass patch we had stopped on.  Our youth group leader was a little upset with the bus driver, but she tried to make the best of the situation.  This was definitely a let down compared to the other places we had wanted to stop at.  A line soon formed in front of the window of the shack and I knew it would be a long wait with only a couple of people working there.   Just as I arrived at the back of the line I heard our youth group leader shout in a panic.  Across the road from us teetered a chubby, wobbly baby boy.  He was wearing only a diaper and there were no adults in sight on that side of the road.  My mind was racing as cars whizzed by at 60 to 65 miles per hour.  One step and the little boy would be history right in front of us.  I recoiled as I realized that if a car swerved to avoid him it could take a large swipe right out of our group.  We had no place to run with obstacles on both sides of us.  Upon initially seeing the child our youth group leader had yelled, “Stop”.  The baby stood there as if frozen at very edge of the road. One car and then another flew by as if they hadn’t seen him as they passed.  Our leader, another gentleman and I spread out and headed across the road. Just as we arrived on the other side the boys parents came running from behind their home which was set back from the road.  They were shocked to see where their boy was and how close he had come to the edge.  They were just as shocked to see us standing there.  All of us with “T” shirts dotted with scripture and things like “God is Great!” in large print across them.  We must have been quite a sight.

It was a little bit of a wait for all of us to get ice cream, but the little shack didn’t run out. 
The wait and the detour had been worth it.  We had a great time sharing and the mood was even better than it had been before we stopped.  We knew that God had put us there for a reason and that our bus driver had been divinely guided.