LIFE ’72 chapter 151.

The Greyhound bus left from the parking lot of Tenth Avenue on July 1 for a two day straight through all night is still hard to believe how much money was raised collecting bottles and papers door-to-door. We had paid the full cost of the conference for several teens and paid for the bus for everyone.

We were looking for something to identify our group from the other 1300 delegates about to decent on Green Lake. I don’t know how the final decision was made but we settled on sailor hats. It fit since we were a port city and the hats certainly helped us find one another in the crowd.

We made two stops along the road to pick up four lonely Americans. The first was Seattle at North Seattle Alliance and the second was along the highway near Moses Lake. There were two at each stop. Other than that and a few stops to buy a meal or change bus drivers (every eight hours) we plowed all day and all night. I remember the first stop was in Montana. We got hung up there longer than expected, as the replacement driver had not yet arrived. It was the middle of the night and there was nothing open, not even their snack bar. No regular buses were scheduled and they did not open it specially for us. At least we were out of the bus for a while — in the dark.

American Baptist Association at Green
Lakes, WI Conference Center

Excitement was high as we traveled across the country even though it began to feel like we would never get there. LIFE ’72 was becoming a teen conference that came every three or four years. The speakers this year were Dr. Mark Lee, President of Simpson College and Dr. Nathan Bailey superintendent of the Midwest District. Music was provided by a 125 voice teen choir under the direction of Bill Weston and music groups from each of the four Alliance colleges.

Roger William Hall - meeting and sleeping hall.

Meetings were held in Pillsbury Hall and housing was in various Inns on the ground and one in the city. The conference grounds slept only 1000 and over 300 were housed off site and bused in every day. We were on the grounds, thankfully.

Afternoons were free to explores, participate in LIFE Olympics — a collection of different sports competitions. I know we competed. We had the talent and enough to field many teams. I just don’t know which ones we won (assuming of course that we won everything we were in). Life Olympics had volleyball, softball, basketball, touch football, tennis and Ping-Pong with delegates competing from various districts. "

Moorhouse Hall,  the oldest building
on the grounds. circa 1890

This was my first year of C&MA Bible quizzing that I did not have a team. Naturally I had to check it out and connect with Bill and Faith Rouse and talk about my impending move to their part of the world. Competitions were great; Western Pennsylvania, South Pacific and West Central districts wcrc pitted against cach other for the championship. When the final buzzer rang it was Western Pennsylvania with 180 points. South Pacific with 110 and West Central with 70. The South Pacific team was mostly from the Long Beach Alliance Church were we would we be attending.

The return trip from LIFE was more eventful that I was hoping for. As expected the kids were wiped out, typical for teens returning from a camp. We were in, I believe, Montana when Sarah became ill. I was nervous most of the time at the conference concerned about her and her behavior. I knew things were not over with her but was praying it would be a good week for her and the rest of us, as it had been lately. She did fine on the trip out and while there, but she became so ill we needed to find a hospital. Easier said than done. The whole experience put everyone on edge.

Forgive me if I got this wrong, but it seems to me we had to leave her there and one of our counselors stayed with her. I was worried that some of her problems had to do with the demons tormenting her and I think I was right. The other side is that it was making her sick. The rest of us when on home.