Reflecting on the past 7 weeks

It has been nearly a week since I have been at camp, so, I have had a lot of time to reflect on my time there and offer you a recap. From the very first day of the trip I knew God had something crazy in mind for the summer, and a reason for having me personally there. That first day (see the post from June 28th) I had little doubt that God wanted me there. I missed my plane because I misread the reservation, I know it does not get much blonder than that. I did not know why that was important immediately perhaps for humbling before camp started, but on the last plane ride I found out why. There were two hurting people going to Saskatoon they had lost a family member and another was missing. I had the opportunity to pray for them. An opportunity I would have missed if I had not missed my flight. Staff training I was reunited with some old pals and got to see the beginnings of an awesome staff that was truly hand picked by God. Teen week was well a stretch at best, but interesting. We (my co-counselor Brittany and I) had some great conversations with our teen campers, though they were not convinced completely about why dressing modestly is important. I also got to have a continuing conversation with a girl who I had as a repeat camper. Teen camp was, hmmm... unique. The first week of kid's camp was stressful, but definitely a worthwhile week. Halfway through the week I prayed that God would give me a heart like His, I did not fully understand what I was getting myself into. When our girls wanted to all accept Jesus into their hearts I found myself giddy with excitement, however, when two of our girls left that Wednesday I cried over them (even though one of them had been a nuisance). The next week was what I hoped would be a welcome break, but it was quite the opposite. The first morning three of us prayed dangerous prayers. I prayed for our faith to be strengthened, Brittany prayed for an amazing and unforgettable for the kids, and another girl, Julianne, prayed for God to show His power. That afternoon God answered. A storm came there was a funnel cloud, hail, and lightning, but after we gathered in prayer again, we saw God remove the storm from us. Sounds like an amazing day, but it was not over. One of the girls also on the dish washing crew wanted to go home, but when we offered to pray for her she turned and ran. We followed her in the car, eventually I got out and walked with her, and what can be only attributed to the fear of God (no joke) she got in the car only to go home the next day. The third week I was unwillingly placed in a cabin, but it was an awesome week. The last night our girls came to us asking for us to show them how to become Christians, not all of them accepted Jesus that night, but I know the ones who did were sincere. The last week of kid's camp was stretching in more ways then I could imagine. That was the week I spoke for chapels, and the week that God decided to really teach me what reaching the unreached people groups would be like. There was a deaf boy there who knew no American Sign Language, apart from the alphabet. Worse still was that he knew nothing about Jesus, a few of us got the opportunity to work one on one with him via pen and paper (as he could read and write) and teach him about God. He did not accept Jesus, but our job as Christians is not to "save people" our job is to sow seeds. The last week was discipleship week where God shoved me out of my comfort zone yet again during devotions. The girls went to the basement for devotions and God put it on my heart to share with them about my 4 and a half year struggle with purity, that was the first time I had ever said the entire story out loud in front of anyone. I am still not entirely sure why that needed to be said. On the way home, reflecting on the trip, God revealed an issue that I think many of us have whether we know it or not. The issue is tunnel vision. Many Christians are so caught up on a small perspective, a narrow view if you will that we miss important things. We may be stuck in the current circumstance that we fail to ask, "How can God use this for His glory?" or we may be stuck focusing on our own issues that we fail to see the hurting people around us. If I may be blunt with you I would like to point out that our current hurts, struggles, and sufferings are minimal in comparison to eternity Paul wrote on that nearly 2000 years ago. God gives us the opportunity to love other people fully by allowing what we are going through to matter less. This is something I struggle with daily. I find myself saying, "Because of this hurt I am incapable of loving someone else." In essence we are self-absorbed at times. I have found that often times God will allow us to go through some tragedy and gives us the opportunity to share with others the good news because we have not lived perfect lives. A recent event in my life should have been traumatizing, and I suppose at first it was, but because I have not and will not allow it to define the rest of my life , and there is crazy joy that is still in my heart despite it, I have been able to reach out to other people going through the same thing. I still wish it had not happened, but I am grateful for the opportunities to share God's love that have come from it. So this is my challenge to you, a challenge given to me this summer. In the morning as you are going through your routine, perhaps having your alone time with God, pray and ask for an opportunity to share God's love with someone. Also look beyond your circumstance.

It would be this week

A year ago Thursday I felt God calling me to deaf ministry. I had no idea where or what would happen next. I started learning sign language and fell in love with the language. I far from fluent, but able to have a decent conversation with someone. One of the things I love about sign language is that it gives me the ability to reach one of the largest unreached people groups and it gives me the opportunity to worship with my hands in church. When I moved out to Texas I started interpreting services and worship for the deaf man in the congregation which was great. This week in one of the boys cabins there is a little boy who has a tragic story that I am not going to go into, but it is really sad. He does not know sign language, but he can read so praise God for having the ability to communicate with him, but we are going to write to him today during swimming. Please pray for him.

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.

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.

One Month Later

Well it has been a month since i last updated, but not a whole lot has happened. I backed out of the China trip because God is leading me to go speak at camp this summer, that should be fun. I am looking more and more into a missions organization for when I finish up college here. I got a job, working as a waitress (oh the irony) however I am only on day two of that. Not really a whole lot else.

Canada

Middle of my trip and I don't think I have been so wiped out in my life. The first week went all right, I had a few old campers and at the end one of my campers came to know Christ. The second week was full of struggles. It started with my toiletries bag going missing and my bottle of wellness (if you dont know what that is it is this terrible tasting stuff that helps your immune system) being dumped and my stuff picked through thankfully nothing else went missing and I got my toiletries bag back. Wednesday evening at the beginning of chapel the camp directors pulled all the cabin leaders into the dining hall and told us that the washroom (aka bathroom) had been messed up by a couple of campers and they did not know who had done it so we had to clean up the poop covered bathroom. While I was scrubbing down one of the toilets I started thinking about well everything and I started laughing because more or less that is exactly what happens when Christ comes and cleans the crap out of our lives (literally). The following evening I got the opportunity to talk to one of my campers and she opened up a lot to me (pray for her). Then we settled into bed with a thunderstorm going on outside. I had thought about telling a scary story, but chickened out because I'm a wimp when it comes to that sort of stuff and the thunder was not helping. Right about the time we were falling asleep another counselor came to our cabin and asked to talk to one of the counselors so I went out and she told me that there were tornado warnings and if we heard the bell we would have to make a run for the basement. Kind of freaky. Oh well.