When Walker Moore, founder of Awe Star Ministries in Tulsa, was looking for a way to celebrate 40 years in ministry, his friend Keith Wheeler suggested they carry a 12-foot cross together to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the highest mountain in Africa.
Moore assembled a 14-person team and reached the summit Aug. 9, but Wheeler was not on the team. He was forced to drop out at the last minute because of a health crisis in his family.
"When I got to the top, I did not raise the cross up. I wanted to save that honor for Keith," Moore said of his friend, a Tulsan who has carried a large wooden cross through many nations of the world for 28 years.
Walker said the trek up the 19,394-foot mountain was the most physically demanding thing he has ever done, despite seven months of rigorous training.
One of his sons, school teacher Jeremiah Moore, 37, accompanied him, along with several other father-son pairs.
The climb took six days and went through five climate zones, from rain forest to sub-zero Arctic temperatures.
Each day they climbed higher and then hiked back down to a base camp that was moved up the mountain behind them, a process that allowed their blood to adjust to the altitude.
On the third day, a group of their guides asked to help the team carry the cross.
"That's not your cross. That's our cross, too," they told Walker. "We want to be part of the team."
Walker agreed, and from then on, the guides took their rotation with the rest of the team carrying the cross.
Walker learned later that churches across Tanzania were following their progress.
Wherever they went, the cross caused a stir, he said, and people from other nations climbing the mountain wanted to talk to them about it.
Park officials confirmed that they were the first group to carry a large cross to the top of the mountain, he said.
At noon on the fifth day they arrived at the final base camp - altitude 15,000 feet - and rested until midnight, when they began the 6 1/2-hour trek to the summit.
Two members of the team suffered altitude sickness and were unable to make the final ascent. About half of the people who attempt the climb make it to the top, park officials told Walker.
The final ascent was "inch by inch," he said. "You can't take steps. You just scoot along, right foot a few inches, breathe in as deep as you can, then left foot a few inches, and exhale sharply.
"It was steep, a 45-degree climb, and slippery, volcanic ash. ... If you go too fast, your oxygen becomes depleted."
Every five minutes, a different team member would carry the cross.
At the top, Walker said, he wept and prayed: "I just want to say thank you for an incredible life."
They stayed for about 15 minutes in the thin, cold air of the summit, from which they could see the curvature of Earth, he said.
"It's like the moon," he said, "rock, snow, ice glaciers. It's very harsh, but there's a beauty to it."
Then the team began a grueling, thigh-burning 12-hour trek to a base camp at 10,000 feet.
"It took everything out of you. We spent two days recovering," he said.
"It was an incredible adventure," Walker said, but not something most climbers want to do more than once.
Walker's Awe Star Ministries takes young people on short-term missions trips around the world with an emphasis on creating what he calls a "Christian bar mitzvah," a rite of passage to adulthood that he says U.S. culture no longer provides.
He has taken 13,000 young people on trips to 47 nations.
Bill Sherman 918-581-8398
bill.sherman@tulsaworld.com
Original Print Headline: Group, cross ascend Kilimanjaro
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