The Church Youth Group Trip from Hell

One of the worst road trips I have ever been on was a church youth group trip to Houston, Texas in summer of 1996. We had problems going over there, problems while we were there, and more problems going back. Needless to say, it was a complete disaster. Even our Sunday school teachers (husband and wife) resigned their posts after we returned.

Most church groups take trips out of state for mission work or some other worthy cause, but this particular trip was mainly just for fun. We were going to hit up some amusement parks and a few other local attractions, then head home after three nights. It seemed like such a simple plan.

The drive from our Mississippi gulf coast home town to Houston was about six hours, so we all met early one morning at the church. We were to pile up into the church's extra long passenger van while another chaperone followed behind in their van. We crammed both vehicles full of people and luggage, then hit the road right at dawn.

Our morning was uneventful until we were about an hour outside of Houston, and that's when fire started shooting out of the back of the van. Needless to say, our trip was stalled a couple of hours in the Texas afternoon heat while we waited for a tow truck to take us to our hotel. It turned out to be some kind of cracked pipe that was causing fumes to be ignited, and it would be fixed before we went back home.

Since we were down one van, a parent with a large van drove over that afternoon to join the group. If they hadn't done that, we would have had to rent something for the long weekend.

The next day at the amusement parks was quite good. Nothing went wrong and nobody got hurt. It was nice. We all returned back to the hotel tired and sunburned and ready for bed. Little did we know what would happen while we slept.

Someone knocked on our door early the next morning, and I answered it to find one of the youth leaders asking if any of us had left anything in the van. I had stashed a case full of CD's and a portable CD player since I was afraid of it being stolen in the hotel room. Well, guess what? Somebody broke into the van belonging to the parent who had volunteered to come along, and the thieves got everything. They took my CD's and some belonging to several other people, plus they damaged the door on the van so that it would not lock properly and they ripped out a TV console.

The drive home wasn't much better. We stopped at a gas station and one of the young teen boys was accused of shoplifting a country music CD off a rack, which was completely ridiculous. He didn't do it, but got so upset by the accusation that he threw up and was sick the rest of the way home. About halfway back, the air conditioner went out in the van we were riding back in - the same van that had been broken into and vandalized.

At one point, our youth group leader broke down and cried. I'm talking full on, hands over the face, full body shaking, heavy weeping. She and her husband resigned as soon as we got back home, and none of what happened was their fault.

Maybe God really didn't want us to go to Houston.