This Boy...

...is so talented that he turns average days into adventures.

Oh, and he sometimes feels like the 3rd wheel when my camera and I are off enjoying sunsets... so then I turn around and find this! 

 .laugh attack.

The Best Summer Yet

"Sometimes you will never know the value of of a moment until it becomes a memory..." -Dr. Seuss

Such an amazing summer cannot be summarized in a single blog post or even in enough words, so I will let the pictures do most of the talking.

Workshop. Two weeks of training to get ready for campers... how to build fires, play sports, and care for campers in everyday situations. I did not feel "ready" at the end of it, but the nervous excitement prior to campers coming was felt by many so I guess we were as ready as we ever would be!

Week 1: The Tan Tigers

Week 2: The Tan Tornados 

Week 3: The Tan Tigers (again :P haha the girls always came up with the tribe names)

Week 4: The Terrific Tan Turtles That Talk Til They're Tuckered

Week 5: The Blue Hortons

Week 6: The Blue Sweaters

Week 7: The Blue Elephants

Week 8: The Blue Fluffy Unicorns Dancing on Rainbows

I absolutely loved counseling! The quirky moments the goofy giggles and the deep conversations... it was such a joy to be a part of these girls lives for a short week. The days were full and often long, but the weeks were fast and the summer went by in a blink. Consistently, my favorite days were Saturdays. Because by then it usually felt like the tribe had clicked and we were able to just all hang out and play and laugh :) At times I felt like I learned more than I taught, and it was probably true! I learned a lot about my selfishness, and about compassion and serving where it is needed, not always where I wanted. I am so thankful for the ways God brought things to my attention over and over again, even though it wasn't pleasant. I am so thankful for the friendships that developed this summer too. What a blessing to serve alongside such wonderful people. I was blessed over and over again by seeing fellow summer staff women and their Christlike examples in situations. It encouraged me and pointed me back to the cross. I was so thankful for the quick, in-passing conversations that happened with my fellow counselors too, uplifting and such a gift when they did happen! All in all it was an amazing summer, this post doesn't do it justice at all... I will miss camp, but am very thankful for opportunity I had to be a part of something so marvelous. Now on to the next great adventure :)

Post Camp Problems

I got home from camp mid Sunday morning, I unpacked my van, took a shower, hopped into bed and cried myself to sleep. I don't know why I was crying, it might have had something to do with only getting 2 hours of sleep the night before, or feeling like home just wasn't home, or thinking about everything in normal life and how un-normal it all felt. I woke up and my dad made me go to Sleepy Hollow State Park with the family and some friends from church. It was great to be forced out of my pathetic hole in the ground and see friends and family. I got 12 hours of sleep, which was double what I had gotten on any night all summer! I felt great when I woke up but decided that there are some lingering effects from living at camp for three months.

Such as the following:
You have no idea what has happened in the world for the last 3 months... and you are totally ok with that.
You get hungry at 8:30am, 12:30pm, and 5:30pm (and 9:30pm :P).
You are listening to music in your room and when someone walks in you quickly turn it off, forgetting that it is actually ok to let your siblings see your laptop and hear your music.
You realize that it isn't a sin to carry your phone in your hip pocket and not in your backpack.
You are crazy thankful for your closet and how much room is in there but have issues deciding which shelves to put clothes on.
You remember that wallets are interesting inventions made to carry around to stores...
And that when they ask for your number in a store, they are asking for your phone number and have no idea what you are talking about when you look at your wrist and blurt out your wristband number.
Your little sister talks about sneaking into your room at night, while you are sleeping, and cutting off said wristband so that you "never go back to camp again."
You realize that carrying around a backpack to Walmart just isn't quite as cool anymore.

There are some other lingering effects... and a lot about the end of camp that I will hopefully post about soon, but for now I'm enjoying family time and some Monday Night Football!! Pretty great that the Steelers and Redskins are playing... meaning I get to watch my favorite team ANNNDDDD I get to see two of my favorite ex-Spartans! Such great timing! :)

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! 

A Letter to the Month of June

Dear June, 

      It was nice seeing you in passing. I realized the other day that you have nearly vanished into a whirlwind of campers coming and going, eager excitement, pure exhaustion, chapels, ambushes, morning clubs and activities. I can’t believe how fast this is going and how rare it is to get a moment to even have time to think about the time that has elapsed. I have two weeks of campers and the west side program is starting to become routine. I’ve been at camp for a month now and we are more than 25% through summer 2013. I am learning the value of living in the moment and enjoying the little things. I have realized that I often either look forward to the next exciting moment or sentimentally recall all the great moments in the past. But I don’t want to wish camp away or not enjoy the current moment due to the fact that I miss last week or even yesterday. I’m having so much fun and am truly enjoying the blessing of this opportunity!

I’ve enjoyed making new friends within the staff but it is also fun to have some familiar faces in the group. Hannah Ford and I camped together ten years ago and it is so cool to be counseling together this summer, we’ve come full circle.

Well I was home for the night and am packing up to leave again bright and early this morning. Yay green and white camp buses!  It was so nice to see my family and to just be home, even though the time was very short. It is so strange to think that in 12 hours I'll be playing ambush with a whole new group of girls. I'm excited and nervous all over again and although the intensity of my nervous emotions are much less than they were the first week and even last week, the butterflies are still there. 

I would greatly appreciate your prayers for the coming weeks, strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow! I love this so much, but it is far from easy. Several people have asked me if I need anything and the only thing that I would really ask for is mail. I have had such encouraging, funny, and delightful letters from so many people over the past few weeks and I truly enjoy hearing from you all! Thank you so much for your encouragement and prayer! I am constantly reminded that I can not do this on my own. Hallelujah! All I have is Christ!

Well June, I should be going and all to soon you will be gone too. Thanks for the tan, the bug bites and the memories, as blurred as they are right now, I will remember you through my journal and blog posts. 

Gotta run, the campers are coming!

My blog post for when the WIFI works

(As you may have noticed by what I titled this post, the WIFI is a tad choppy so I am hoping that it actually posts this time.)

I’m sitting on the front porch of the E.S. Dinning Hall enjoying the warm evening air and the sweet summer sounds coming from all around me. Camp is peaceful and quiet right now, but in many ways it feels like the calm before the storm. In two days, our training will be complete (as complete as it is going to get anyways) and the situations and campers that the last two weeks have been preparing us for will cease being the topics of sessions and will start to be realities. It is extremely exciting, terrifying, amazing, and scary all at the same time. I keep going back and forth between being totally ready and wishing they could just come now and feeling completely unprepared and feeling like I need months more to prepare. We all got a TAWG (for you non-camp people that’s Time Alone With God) this evening and it was great to re-focus and ponder once again the real reason why I am here this summer. When I step back like that and realize that the reason I am here is to first and foremost proclaim the good news of the Gospel to those around me, then all the insecurities, doubts, fears, and worries slip away.

The words to this song explain my thoughts far better than I can:

I've been the one to shake with fear and wonder if You're even here.

I've been the one to doubt Your love, I've told myself You're not enough.

I've been the one to try and say, I'll overcome by my own strength.

I've been the one to fall apart and to start to question who You are.

I've been the one held down in chains beneath the weight of all my shame.

I've been the one to believe that where I am You cannot reach.

And then I remember who is really in control and I stand in awe:

You're the one who conquers giants

You're the one who calls out kings

You shut the mouths of lions

You tell the dead to breathe

You're the one who walks through fire

You take the orphan's hand

You are the one Messiah

You are I am

Such comfort and peace knowing that everything is in God’s control!

Well, it is already time to move on to the next thing on the schedule. They sure do keep us moving around here. I hope to update again soon, but until next time I sure would appreciate prayer. Most especially for the continued focus and passion to share Christ’s love with those I come in contact with, and also for peace and wisdom in all the conversations and interactions I will have with campers and staff in the following weeks. TTFN