‘Find the Missing Pastor’ at the FUMC escape room this weekend

Escape room designed and built by youth group

Posted

HURON — An Escape Room designed and built by the youth group at Huron First United Methodist Church will be open Friday until Sunday, to raise funds for the Revive Youth Ministries to assist in this year’s mission trip to Milwaukee.
The Escape Room is all team based, for groups between two and eight people. The first booking is Friday at 6 p.m. Saturday goes from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday will be from noon until 7 p.m.
Using brainpower and teamwork, groups have 45 minutes to find out “Who kindnapped the Pastor, why was he taken, and where is he.” The escape game will mainly consist of riddles, puzzles and locks that players will need to solve to escape in time.
The escape game will be held in a room at the back of the Huron First United Methodist Church, and there is a video that participants will watch beforehand to understand the motive of the game.
The idea to build an Escape Room came to Emma Jungemann on a trip to Mitchell. “A youth group had an escape room in their church they built themselves,” Jungemann explained.
“I came to the group leader and said that this would be a good idea for a fundraiser. I always thought of it as a fun activity before.”

Jungemann and the youth group got together to think of ideas for the D.I.Y. escape room. “There were about five or six of us brainstorming ideas. We wrote the whole plot and mapped out the route ourselves,” said Jungemann. “It’s all new, fresh ideas.
“I’ve done them before and thought they were a lot of fun,” Jungemann shared. “The closest one to us commercially is in Sioux Falls. They also have trailers, but we thought it would be fun to make it up ourselves, especially since it is a fundraiser, and we can integrate a little Christian theme into it.”
Each team will be allowed three hints during their time slot to help out if they get stuck.
“We wanted to keep it light and happy. A lot of escape rooms have a dark theme, and we didn’t want to do anything that was not lighthearted and fun,” said Jungemann.
The group has been working on organizing the fundraiser since summer, and since the announcement was made the bookings have been filling up fast.
“We still have quite a few slots left, but the evening ones are really popular, so they are booking up fast,” Jungemann explained, “If this year goes well there’s already talk of going bigger next year. This is our pilot, and we are excited to see if it is received well by the community. It’s really a team building activity and it’s fun for families, friends and co-workers.”
To reserve a spot at the escape room visit www.bookeo.com/huronfumc/, see remaining time slots and make payments there.
Questions and answers are also available at the Facebook event page. Search “Huron FUMC escape room” to find the group.  
Jungemann leaves this advice for those who are doing an escape room for the first time: “Go in with an open mind. Everything is a clue unless it says, ‘this is not a clue,’ but there are decoys too. Everything could be a clue.”

Photo:

On the left is Taryn Cass and Emma Jungemann, who are standing in front of the “missing pastor’s office,” which is the basis of an escape room that the youth group of First United Methodist Church designed and constructed. The escape room will be open this Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Photo by Angelina Della Rocco/Plainsman