Hello again everyone. I’m back from yet another trip, this time to camp where I took some of my 6th grade girls from church for the week, and I’ve been taking them since they were in the 3rd grade. I look forward to this week every year! I love it up on the mountain! It is so much fun getting to spend time with the small group of girls that I take. I always seem to have the same girls, which is also awesome, because every year we get a little bit closer.
This year, I had 2 days to do laundry and completely pack for camp because we came home from Laughlin with 2 days until my sis and I left. Didn’t matter to me! I was happy to do the laundry and go, after all, this quite possibly could be my favorite week of the year for the past 4 years. The staff is amazing! I love them to death! Oh, and this year they had, well, mostly new staff, which was still awesome. They were a very young staff, but they totally rocked! Great job guys!
Anyway, while we are up on the mountain, Adventure Mountain this year… Side note… 3rd and 4th grade go to Indian Village, 5th and 6th grade go to Adventure Mountain and Junior High goes to Creekside, in case you were wondering. Anyway, back to the point… While we’re on the mountain we basically become the parent to these kids, but I refuse to play mommy to these girls when they have stupid little fights. They had a few that some of the other councelors (not from our church) gave me dirty looks for making the girls work it out themselves. I think at age 12, you need to be able to handle a stupid little fight yourself without having someone else step in. They are amazing! they worked out all but 1 fight by themselves, and that one they couldn’t work out because it was between them and another girl from another tent who kind of has the attitude that she’s better than everyone else… We got it resolved though.
I also had the most amazing group of councelors there with me, both from my church and the one other that was added to my Nation. A nation is basically a group of 5 tents that hang out together all week for the activities. We had so much fun laughing and talking about things that we probably would never have discussed down the mountain. Anyway, gotta make sure they all know how much I love them!
We do all kinds of things with the kids. We go polar bearing, which is where the kids have to go underwater and hold their breath for at least 3 (I think) counts of a polar bear. Oh, by the way the water is about 46 degrees! No thank you! Haha… Also we go to the lake where they have the blob, they get to shoot bb guns and bows and arrows, climb the rock wall, and go to the skate park. There are a whole lot more, but those are all the ones off the top of my head…
My favorite part, believe it or not, is when we get the chance to do what they call deck connections. It is a point in time specifically set aside for each of the kids, girls in my case, to come out onto our tent deck and have a one on one chat with me about anything they wish to talk about. And when I say anything, I mean anything from their favorite food to their parents are getting divorced or something like that. I’ve known my girls long enough now that they all tell me the serious stuff in their lives, which I love that they trust me so much as to tell me things that they don’t even tell their best friends or their parents. It is the coolest thing when a young woman confides her biggest secret in you and then openly talks about whatever it is, knowing that it will never leave me and her. I talk to most of these girls on at least a weekly basis, which allows me to connect even more and make sure they are staying on track if they have an area in their life which they are working to improve upon. A couple of them, I pretty much talk to daily as well. I love them to death!
Ok, so this post is getting kind of long, but there are just a couple of things I still need to say; things that I have to share because they are just awesome! Here’s the big one… On the second night of deck connections, the staff of the Mountain gave us the option to meet as a church instead of as individuals with our campers. After talking to the director of the children’s ministry of the church and getting together what we thought would be a 15 maybe 20 minute chat with our church kids, we decided to do it. We met as a church group instead of as individual tents. This is about 50 kids… Anyway, we planned on reading two verses and asking questions to go with these verses, which we did and the kids had awesome answers! But on the second question, which was something about how we can be missionaries and worship God as kids when we come back down the mountain, one of the boys stands up and says in front of all of the kids that he has no friends at school, all the kids call him a loser and that his dad is dying of cancer. He said he wants to be the kid in the crowd who doesn’t treat people like that, he wants to help out the others who are in a similar situation to him.
That made most of the kids cry, and the leaders for that matter. What was so amazing about this night is the sense of the church family that I’m pretty sure most if not all of these kids got to feel and be a part of for the first time. After this young man stood up and shared, other kids started standing and sharing what they were going through. And let me tell you, some of these stories these kids have are those that are like a punch to the chest. I don’t know why or how these kids are dealing with some of the things going on in their lives. It just shows me how amazing they all are.
Oh, but it gets better. We asked one of the worship leaders of the camp to stick around and sing the Benediction for us when we finished, not knowing we were going to have cryfest… He shared a story about a teacher he had who’s wife got shot in the head and died on a Thursday I believe, and the teacher showed up on Monday. He told his students it’s what she would have wanted. This worship leader then decided to sing a song he had written for this teacher of his. It was amazing that he shared that with us, and let me tell you, if there was any kid who wasn’t crying yet, they all were when he was finished. And yes, even the boys were crying. They justified it by saying real men cry because one of our amazing councelors was crying. How awesome is that!
So we sang the Benediction in a big group hug. I can honestly say that I have NEVER seen God work in the lives of kids in a better way. The rest of the week they couldn’t be seperated, the guys, the girls, they all stuck together and backed each other up. And now that we’re home, I’ve already seen some of these campers, both boys and girls, hugging each other and asking if there is anything they need prayer for. I can’t believe how awesome that was. It leaves you with a feeling like no other. I can only describe the experience as a once in a lifetime, truely amazing experience.
Ok… so this is really long now, but I hope you all think it’s worth it to have read it. The funny part of the whole camp experience is how many of the councelors (again, not from our church, this is from what we have heard from other sources) come home and feel totally drained. Camp for me is exactly the opposite. It is what recharges me for the rest of the year. And when I start to feel drained again, I just call up some of my girls and have some fun. They recharge me. They teach me more than I teach them I think. I love them all.
Well, those are the ramblings for now. I hope I didn’t bore you… Until next time, don’t forget to smile at the little things 
