Friday, July 29, 2011

Week # 3

The summer is flying. I cannot believe that next week I am speaking and I only have two weeks left here. This past week I was in a cabin, and I was not too excited about it. However, this is not my first summer and I have learned if I go in with a crummy attitude then my week will follow likewise (okay so that is not just at camp). So I prayed and started reading Philippians over and over again, and I came across a passage in the first chapter where Paul is talking about people preaching with the wrong motives and how to him it doesn't matter because Jesus is being preached. Anyways with that in mind I decided it was time to stop judging some of the others for their motives and rejoice that God is using even them to preach the good news. This week was awesome. Energy was found in God, and I discovered that actually spending time with God on my breaks helped. This past week was awesome and the best was Thursday night when a few of the girls asked to accept Jesus. Neither my co-counselor nor myself asked them, they came to us. It was so sweet. This next week I am speaking in the chapels so I would greatly appreciate your prayers.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Dontcha love Mondays

I have no idea how to describe what exactly just happened. I know that God is good and huge and mighty and we are all so in awe of what happened. Let me give you a breakdown of what happened today. The forecast called for sunshine and warmth all week long, and that is how we woke up, sunny and warm. Midway through the morning dishes a storm rolled in, which put a little bit of a damper on things. After supper it started raining like crazy then hailing, first about the size of marbles then it got bigger. I am not entirely sure how long that went on, but after awhile everything calmed down and we thought it was over. Jason came in and herded the 53 campers and 18 cabin leaders into the basement. The rest of us formed a circle outside and started praying over the camp for protection and praying that God would send the storm away. This is where it gets awesome. At first it was just a small break in the clouds, the slightest sliver of blue is what we could see. As we waited and watched it got progressively bigger until there were clouds all around, but blue sky above the camp. After that the entire staff was praising God and some of the campers too. It was a pretty awesome ordeal. The crazy thing is that there was a tornado touchdown about 2 miles (around 3km) from the camp. The damage done by the storm was minimal and fixable so praise God for that.
Unfortunately last night right about 11:30 it was just about bedtime. One of my LIT girls was talking to Anita about going home. We were walking back to the cabin trying to find out what happened. She could not put it to words. About the time we got to the cabin we were staying in Anita asked to pray for her, and she refused. Shortly thereafter she turned around and started walking quickly towards the road with the intention of walking home. We followed in the truck. About ten minutes after she started walking another storm had started. The wind was blowing like you would not believe, lighting every which way, and we are pretty sure there was a bear knocking around. We finally convinced her to come back into the truck. We phoned her grandma who said she would come in the morning. We both ended up spending the night in Jason and Anita’s basement. I do not know what all was happening with this girl. Perhaps I am just a bit wimpy, but it strikes me as odd that a girl of 14 would willingly walk out in a thunderstorm after a tornado touchdown a few miles away and a bear on the loose. Please pray for this girl.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Staff training... or lack thereof

Transitioning from teen camp to kids camp is no walk in the park. For years I begged for a young cabin (ranging 7 - 10), but I always managed to get the older girls (11 and 12). This first week of kids camp I had mostly eight-year olds. Quite the change from mostly fifteen-year olds. Suddenly the understanding that they did not quite grasp really huge concepts or words was a bit unsettling as I attempted to change the way I communicated. How you communicate to an eight-year old is so completely different than the way you communicate to a teenager. In teen camp the biggest challenges were getting them to sleep, then getting them to wake up. With the group of girls I had everything was a challenge. With the group of girls I had in week one of kids camp everything seemed to be a challenge. I had two relatively quiet girls, an energizer bunny, a love bug, a slightly older attitude, one who got sick Wednesday, and one who was “homesick” at first then we realized that she was just an attention seeker. The week was not made easier by the injuries I received last weekend. Saturday in a failed attempt at walking on the seesaw I managed to bruise and scrape up my legs, it looked like I had been beat up or something. Sunday when we first got the campers, one of them wanted to do this balance beam partner log walk and I did well until it came time to get off when I sort of rolled my ankle. It hurt Monday morning but then it stopped causing pain, eventually I put ice on it later on in the week due to unnecessary swelling and such. It is more or less back to normal. I will say the coolest part of this past week was Tuesday night, my co-counselor, Kassy and I got the privilege to lead our cabin to Christ, they all wanted to make the decision. So, despite being exhausted, without patience, and beyond drained I have to say it was an incredible week. This next week they are giving my a break of sorts and making me LIT (leaders in training) leader which means lots of dishes and bathrooms and pouring into just two young ladies who will be LITs.
I will say this in regards to the kids accepting Christ. From what I understand the whole cabin accepting Christ is not terribly uncommon, what is uncommon is when just one will. The girls were all from the same reserve so it is not terribly unbelievable they all wanted to do it. A couple years ago I had one girl who accepted Christ and that was a rather uncommon occurrence because in the cabin were a couple others who were from the same reserve and they actually did treat her noticeably different and not in a good way when she made the announcement. Perhaps it is rather cynical of me, but I wonder how many were sincere, if nothing else my prayer is that the girls will at one point remember something from this week later on and lay the groundwork for a decision.
Strangely Monday night seemed to be the night that Satan attacked our cabin. First it was the “homesick” girl, then another girl went to the nurse, and by the time we got back to the cabin it seemed just like this heaviness had settled on the cabin. I laid down and hoped it would all go away, but it didn’t, and I felt the strong need to pray. So I got up and started praying protection and safety over the cabin. After about half an hour of that I knew I need someone else to pray, so I went to the LIT cabin and had them pray and then to the program director for the same. I went back and prayed some of the psalms over the girls and finally at about midnight I slept. It was incredibly strange and frankly tiring.

Friday, July 8, 2011

Lessons from Kayaking

I thought about writing some deep thought provoking post on the past week of camp. Instead I would give you a little something to make you smile. Tonight after the campers went home, the work was done, and we were done with supper, a few of us went kayaking. We got in and went out and it was so peaceful and beautiful. It turned out that my kayak as well as one of my friends had a slow leak, no big deal. We started heading back and I kept my balance it was all good. I made it back to shore last because I was sitting in the middle of lake enjoying the beautiful scenery. I got back to shore and there came the difficult process of getting out of the kayak. My leg was out of the kayak and I was more or less ok, until the mud started slipping from underneath and my kayak tipped, it was hysterical.

Surprisingly a fair amount has been accomplished in breaks and free time and such. Learned to play 5 chords on the guitar as well as a blues rhythm. Finally finished a song that I'd been working on for a long time. Regardless, teen week is finally over and it is rather bittersweet while I miss the campers I am glad that next week is kid's camp, and that I have a couple of days to recover and study. I wonder what God has for all of us this next week. Please

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Teen camp tomorrow

So much has been accomplished this past week. We re-carpeted the stage, cleaned the boathouse, mowed the extensive grounds, and so much more. It is great being up here and seeing everyone again, like one insane/dysfunctional family we are.

Tomorrow begins teen camp and I am bunking and leading with an awesome chick named Brittany. Craziness because five years ago we were in the same cabin as teen campers. Now so many years later we join forces as leaders. I cannot wait for church tomorrow and for the arrival of campers.

Please pray for unity in the staff, open hearts for everyone, and though it may get me into trouble later, patience. This summer will be awesome. Next week I will post pictures.