Finish Strong

Week 8.

It is the end of July.

I go home in August.

This is my last week as a regular counselor.

All these truths don’t seem possible at all and I am having a hard time believing any of them! I had three weeks on East Side and now am finishing out on West Side this week. East side was a different ball game for sure; it felt much more like camping (probably due to Thursday nights which are spent outside) but it was so much fun! I loved all of my campers so much; it was such a joy to be their friend! This week I want to pour my all into my campers again, not holding anything back. I feel that every week I am continuing to learn that God is in control, He is teaching me that my desires and plans are often very selfish. It is humbling to see the same thing being brought to my attention over and over and knowing that in and of myself I can’t change. It is very encouraging too though. To know the one who can change me and will! Chapels every week have been really good reminders and I feel like I am learning along with the campers most weeks. Last week the chapels were about the names of God… it was all stuff that I had learned in Sunday school, but it was a fantastic reminder and one of my favorite chapel themes for sure! Next week is my week off to hang out with my family and start to focus on going back home, and then I come back to camp for week 10 with Ben. Then August 18^th I head home! Crazy! Hannah Ford leaves camp this week, and several other people are finishing up their summers this week. It is sad to see them at the end of their summer journey and to realize that we are all leaving sooner than we really think. I’ve been so blessed to have the opportunity to work alongside all these people, to have so many different jobs and positions and backgrounds and stories all come together for the purpose of furthering the Gospel in the lives of the campers lives. It is a beautiful thing! So here we go again… here comes campers and here comes August. I hope we can all finish well and finish strong!

Quick Update (written on Monday the 8th)

The days have slipping into weeks, and the weeks into months.  Mondays (our staff day off) haven’t really given me a chance to update my blog or even open my laptop very often. Week 3 was the roughest week for me so far. My campers were great, and I had the schedule down, but my mentality was off. Way off. I was miserable; I had been in the same cabin for 3 weeks and had had the same schedule. I knew that I would be there again for week 4 and I felt slightly trapped. At one point, I was ready to go home on the next bus and be done. During my TAWG on Monday night I was looking through on of the papers we were given and one of the sections (taken from Tom Harmon’s book on prayer) struck home for me. It said “the refusal to die to myself is what makes me so miserable.” At camp it is a hard concept to realize that you are refusing to die to yourself because simply living here for the whole summer seems like a huge sacrifice in and of itself. It is so easy to look at all that I’ve given up this summer and think that I deserve a break, or that I am so selfless and sacrificing. But I needed that awakening. After that phrase, it listed 20 or 30 some things under the heading of “I yield my rights to…” It was very humbling to read through the list and realize that I haven’t been yielding my rights in hardly any of them. In fact, I highlighted the ones I felt especially convicted on and when I looked back, basically the whole list was highlighted. No wonder I had been miserable. I was refusing to die to myself; and refusing to see that God has been placing me exactly where He has planned on putting me since the beginning of time! Instead, I was having pity parties for myself and believing lies. I was looking at all that I had given up instead of all that I was still holding tightly to. I so enjoyed last week living in the state of seeing those things. I know that in many ways my fist is still closed tightly around what I want a lot of the time. But I know God is faithful and I am so excited to see Him at work in the lives of my campers and me! I have had 27 incredibly amazing campers so far and I have truly enjoyed this journey!