dougleavy

This past weekend we took our High School Youth Group to Snow Mountain Ranch near Winter Park, CO for a retreat we called “Endurance”. We had the awesome opportunity to bring in former pro snowboarder and Amazing Race contestant Andy Finch and his wife Amber. I mean if you are going to call it Endurance, you better have some sort of athlete there right? ;-)

If you did not catch season 19 of The Amazing Race, you missed it! Andy and his teammate Tommy came in 4th overall, but more importantly probably broke most of the liberal broadcast TV rules for being allowed to talk so much and openly about being a Christian and what Christ meant to them in their daily lives and in the competition. Well done gentlemen!

Amber I’ve actually know since she was in High School (or earlier) as our families were friends and I was an intern with this same youth group (yeah I’m getting old I guess). So it was even more fun to have her back with the old youth group. I just finally got the chance to meet the guy who swept her off her feet!

Since we had so many students on the trip and we wanted to make sure they all got quality time with an adult leader, we setup Andy and Amber each with a small group of students as well to mentor for the weekend. What a blessing these two were. The students (as did we leaders) fell in love with them both right away, not because Andy was a famous boarder or TV star, but because he was REAL. He was sincere. He had stories everyone could relate to. He spoke in a manner that pulled you in. Oh and did I mention, he’s just an all-around good, humble guy??!! No really, he is.

Any of my youth/church leader friends I would HIGHLY encourage you to get in touch with Andy about speaking with your students. He may even throw down some tricks if you take him to the slopes… who knows, we did some crazy stuff on the tubing hill.

Get in touch with Andy: andyfinch.net