GOAT Blog

Check out John’s Mountain Goat shirt all the way from Scotland!

We also shipped on out to Australia last week…

If you’re in Greenville, or know somebody who is we’re offering a great deal for summer memberships to help allow for more kids to climb in the gym!

This is a great deal/activity for students who are out for the summer! Help us spread the word!

The details: Good from purchase date until August 23rd. Only on sale until the end of May. The sooner you buy, the better the deal.

We wanted to share our newest shirt from The Mountain Goat (our climbing gym - if you haven’t checked it out yet, you should).

Most basic climbing knots. But upside down. So you can look down to cheat.

Clever, huh?

get your own at store.goattrips.org!

(Thanks to our dear friend, Matt Moreau for making it happen! We can’t take the credit for it)

That’s right, now all of your GOAT (and Mountain Goat) goods needs can be fulfilled on the world wide web. Everything you buy funds trips for kids. Cool, right?

We’ve had a lot of requests for some of our new shirts and stickers, so we’ve centralized it in one common space where you can feed your need for GOAT. There are a few sale items (get them while you can) and a free shipping code if you spend more than $45 (enter WOOHOO at checkout)

We hope you’re as excited as we are! Let us know what you think and what you’d like to see!

Visit the GOAT store!

Link: 2012 Summer Guide Training

If you’ve ever thought “man, I wanna help guide GOAT trips” this is your chance. We’re training (a limited number of) volunteer guides in May. Everything you could ever want to know is at the link above.

Just planting seeds…

Last summer Robbie, one of our interns, and I went on a backpacking trip in Panthertown Valley with a group of boys from a community center in Greenville. The boys we took on this three day backpacking trip were some of the older “veteran” students of the center’s summer program and considered leaders among their peers. Robbie and I went into the trip with this in mind and decided to go a little heavier on the challenge side of our theme for this trip. Our theme would be to teach the boys about how God has a history of leading his people into the wilderness to speak to them- to show them something about Himself or about themselves. From the very beginning of the trip, Robbie and I both saw the leadership qualities in these boys and the “potential” that their group leaders had been telling us about. We spent our time hiking through rhododendron tunnels, catching crawfish, sliding down waterfalls- interspersed with conversations about men like Moses, Elijah and Jacob who learned their purpose, regained their strength, or wrestled with God in the wilderness. We challenged them to seek out why God brought them out into the wilderness and what he might want to teach them, and we challenged them to step up as leaders in their community. We expected the boys to be giddy with excitement after spending the day exploring a waterfall, to open up to Robbie and me about being a leader in their community, and to respond to our challenge, but we really didn’t get this type of response from any of the boys. Mostly we got blank stares and awkward silences in our conversations, and we ended up spending a lot of time dealing with the boys complaints and arguments. This was not how Robbie and I saw things shaping up for this trip, but this is one of the biggest lessons I’ve had to learn working with our kids- not to be results driven.

Often I’ve found myself measuring our impact on these kids by how much tangible change I get to see while were are actually on the trip. I want to be the “harvester”- the one who gets to prayer the prayer with the kid who is accepting Christ as their savior or to be there when a kid realizes he doesn’t have to be a slave to sin. But I’ve learned that what a lot of our kids need is for seeds to be planted. This isn’t as glamorous or thrilling of a side to ministry as the “harvesting” often is, but what’s one without the other?

A few weeks ago I was meeting with the leader of the community center that the group of boys that I went backpacking with last summer were from, and he shared something really surprising to me. As I said before, the group that went backpacking with Robbie and I are considered the leaders among the rest of the kids at the center and have been a part of the center for years, having the opportunity to have a lot of fun and exciting experiences. What their leader told me was that if you asked any one of the boys what their favorite activity or trip that they have experienced over the last few years was, they all say hands down it was the backpacking trip. He told me that eight months later they were still talking about the waterfalls, campfires and conversations we had on that trip. This was one of the most encouraging conversations that I have had with a group leader. To hear that - although we did not get to see fruits of our labor on that backpacking trip last summer - our time spent with those boys was still worth the effort.

Link: We're hiring!

Wanna change the world with us? We’re looking for someone to help us grow financially in the same way our programs are growing. This job isn’t for the faint of heart.

We’re excited about our growth and looking for the right person to not only help with what we already do (read: guide trips and hang out with kids) but to develop and execute a full marketing/fundraising plan.

Help us spread the word!

Link: 2012 Summer Internships

Want to be a part of the coolest/hardest/most challenging/most rewarding summer of your life? Know somebody (18 years old +) who does?

This. Is. It.

Everybody talks about work hard, play hard and likes to do funny things to portray that they do it - but we really do it. There’s no way around it in our work. We work together, we play together, and this summer our interns get to live together.

So spread the word. Applications are due March 31st, but don’t wait that long. We’ll probably have already made decisions at that point. Get it!

Sorry we’ve been a little quiet on here recently. We’ve been really busy getting our newest project, The Mountain Goat, up and running.

If you don’t know what it is, you can read more about it at mountaingoatclimbing.com and you’ll probably get a little hint at what’s going on from the video.

This video was put together by our good friend and fellow worker, Zach Suggs, from our public opening night.

Congrats to our own Program Coordinator, Joey, and his beautiful bride Kathryn on tying the knot this past Sunday!

GOAT (Great Outdoor Adventure Trips)

Just planting seeds…