It was the beginning of a beautiful November day as over 50 of our parish’s youth, parents and adult mentors piled into a caravan of cars on Sunday. Destination: Great Country Farms for a fun filled day of pumpkin smashing and worship. Upon arrival, there was no hesitation to start the day's multitude of activities.

Some went straight for the food- the pork barbeque sandwiches were a huge hit. Others wanted their pumpkin to be smashed right away so they headed to the line that congregated near the pulley which brought the pumpkins up so they could then be dropped and driven into a tree trunk.

At 2:00 pm sharp everybody headed over to the potentially most talked about event, the pig races. The first race consisted of various pop star pigs such as Ham-a Montana- and the second one was a presidential pig race in which Boar-ack Obama beat Pig-Cain by literally a nose.

At the conclusion of the pig races, everybody headed over to the giant pillow of air, which greatly resembled a large moon bounce. This was by far one of the most popular things to do. Everybody had a great time jumping around, although some people did fall more than others.

Some other fun activities were the maze, the racing slides, and the giant rope swings. Needless to say, no one wanted to leave when 3:00 pm came around, but we were also excited about what was in store for us next.

We piled back into the cars and headed to Good Shepherd Bluemont for a mini-youth group session. We started off by playing several group oriented games, one in which you got pied in the face for not being able to think of a fruit off the top of your head.
Once everybody got cleaned up, we headed into the church to worship together. We did a Thanksgiving type activity in which we listed several things we were grateful for. We then learned how to be grateful for everything we have and to view other people's gifts not with jealousy but with a recognition of God's grace at work within them. We can in turn use that recognition to build stronger relationships with God and those close to us.

It was time for us to leave, but not without new things to think about and be grateful for. The day was without a doubt a success. We had so much fun and grew together as a youth group. Who knew smashing pumpkins could bring you closer to God?