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.