Sr. High, Jr. High 1 and 2

Hey everybody! So these last 3 weeks have been a wild ride. Here are the highlights...

• Sr. High I could immediately tell that it was going to be interesting. My camper's names(or nicknames) were as follows: Peanuts, Trail Mix(or Tray for short), Bubbles, KJ, Marshmallow. They were all super rowdy and all came from pretty rough families. (Pretty much the opposite of me.) But there were two things that I will remember from that week for the rest of my life.
• Jordan's Chip:Jordan Wood was staying in our cabin that week. And Tuesday night he and KJ were talking, when Jordan pulled out a chip(a Dorito to be exact). He set it on the picnic table and smashed it. And slowly Jordan took away a piece of the broken chip naming it,("This is your Dad", "These are your friends", etc.), until finally there was only one piece of chip left. "This is God", said Jordan, "Even when it seems like you've got nothing and God has left you, He's right there." After that KJ and Jordan prayed beneath the cross on Chapel Hill. A Dorito changed KJ's life. He was so excited about it, that he did Wednesday night devos and shared the same example with the rest of the cabin. I shared about how God quote on quote "wrecked my life" by moving me away from my friends, my town, my church and sending to a town that was messed up. I shared how I had pretty much been a brat about it and how God changed my heart and gave those material things back to me. It felt really great.
• Marshmallow: Marshmallow and I got along great that week. The only thing we didn't agree on was the Bible. Marshmallow though that God didn't exist and thought that God, if he did exist couldn't save him from his past of drugs and Satanism. I talked with him for several hours and his main question was this: Why would God create people if he knew they were going to screw up? We basically used this illustration for most of our conversation: God is the Father who bought a batch of puppies. These puppies, he knew beforehand, were going to wreck his house and bite and be a pain in the neck. But he loved the puppies so much that when the big, bad, bus driver Satan, tried to get rid of the puppies, God's son Jesus sacrificed himself to save the puppies. It was a conversation that I will never forget.
• The Weekend: That weekend I spent at the McGinnis' house and hung out with Jordan and got to see people(Tyler Wolcott, Rogows, Mr. Johnson, Jenny Case,Conners) that I haven't seen/hung out with in a while.
• Jr. High week 1: That week I had a group of five guys(no burgers or fries): Chris(who does stand up comedy), Brad(who tried to convince everyone that his name was Joe), Tom (from Depue, NY), Nick(Camper of the week from Sr. High), and Austin(who was pretty normal). I think that God gave me well-behaved campers that week so I could listen to the messages. The speaker was Uncle Buddy Robinson from AIG he talked about the five questions. Here they are... #1:What do you mean by what you're saying?(What do you mean?); #2:How do you know that what you're saying is true?(How do you know?); #3: What difference does what you're saying make in your life?(So what?); #4: What would you accept as evidence?
• Stats: Uncle Buddy gave a statistic that really hit home with me and a lot of the kids. School time:900 hours; TV time(not including video games, movies, etc.) Church time:100-200 hours
• Jr. High 2: I got to be in a cabin with five other guys with names as follows: Daniel, Andrew, Alex, Alan and Nathan. Pretty much everyone was annoyed with Alan and Alan didn't care. This last week I learned a lot of patience.
• Water balloons: In the past 3 weeks I've filled over 1200 water balloons. So I decided that I should make a Biblical metaphor involving water balloons. Pretty much this is what I got: Water balloons are like people. They reject God, pop under worldly pressure, or live for him and retain the water. Pretty cool!
• Random Stuff: Michael and Tony(2 campers from Sr. High week) came three weeks in a row. I got to hang out with Katy Depue pretty much all of Jr. High 1. My team won Jr. High 2 and got to stay up til like midnight.
• Team names and cheers: Sr. High: My team was Team Dihydrogen Monoxide. Cheer was as follows: Dihydrogen monoxide: we're really only water/ We hope that when we take you down it won't be such a slaugter/ When things heat up we'll just go with the flow/ And by the end of the week we'll be #1, you know. (YO! For show!(Tray does worm.) Cheers and applause.) Jr. High 1: My team that week was The Flaming Unicorns of Fury: (Spidey reads Job 39:9-12) Tim Woudenberg:(Spoken/shouted) Its a bird! No! It's a plane! No! Its the flaming unicorns of fury!(Cheering) Robbie Lindmark:(Spoken)Alright everybody! Please mount your unicorns! We got a new song for the generations! And it goes like this...(Singing begins)Trot to the left! Trot to the right! Trot to the left! Trot to the right! Everybody clippyclop! Clippycloppy!(4x) Cross horns!(2x) One clop this time(2x) Two clops this time(2x) Everybody clippyclop! Clippycloppy(4x) (Cheering. Everyone falls down.) Jr. High 2: (Veggietales theme)If you like to swim with the bubbles/ If you don't like crocodiles/ If you like to run into trouble/ Up and down the English Channel... Have we got a team for you... 1,2,3,4! Jellyfish! Jellyfish! etc.

And that was what was going on with me for the last 3 weeks! Hopefully it won't take as long for me to blog next time. For now TTFN!

Family Camp 1

So I've been meaning to post again, and it turned out that again was now. So CIT was pretty cool, but this was the actual first week of Camp at Lamoka Baptist Camp which is where I've going to be doing tasks(We don't jobs, just tasks.) all summer long till August 21. So this is what happened my first week at camp.

• So here's who I've been hanging out with: Zachary Clouse(from Phillie who is on maintainance), John((can't remember his last name) who lives over near Kingston(Catskills/NYC area and is on maintainance), Zachary Waters(who lives in Bradford, just up the road and is on maintainance(Do you sense a pattern?)), Shae Maloy(who is in charge of Maintainance/Paintball), Greg Howard(who is basically who I'm going to be helping out all summer(I'll explain about that later), Mary Blanchard(Seth Blanchard's younger sister and a nut), Blake(I'll explain about him later too), Eathan( I'll explain),and all the rest of the staff.
• The first morning I woke up at 7 and scurried to be ready to head out by 8. But I screwed up and was an hour late to the staff meeting because it started at 8 and I got there at 9. The rest of the morning was spent filling water balloons and stuff like that for an afterenoon game. I requested to be a dish fish, but the letter I received said that I was on maintainance. But when CIT rolled around I was told I was Greg's assistant(AKA the program director's assistant), but since Greg didn't have anything for me to do CIT week, I helped out the maintainance crew for the week. (That's how I know all the maintainance people.) But this week, Family Camp 1, I helped out Greg. So when the game rolled around, we got in a few tosses of the waterballoons before it started into rain. Very depressing. But on the bright side, I was able to babysit kids all evening during chapel time and get some "kid time" that way.
• Day two I got to listen to Pastor Brent Carl speak for the first time. It was awesome! (I know only God is awesome, but isn't stuff God does awesome too?) Brent Carl was talking about when he went to Kenya and about how he got hooked up with International Youth Ministry. He talked about a group there called "Be the Change". It really inspired me to be the change where I am; to be a doer and not a hearer only. The stuff I did in that day was pretty normal(setting up games, playing them, helping out wherever, etc.).
• Day three was pretty normal as well, but Wednesday was the day that I started refereeing paintball. It was very cool! Wednesday's message was also cool, because Pastor Carl told about this youth group in Malaysia called "Frontliners". Their slogan was "Famous in heaven, feared in hell." It was way cool! Wednesday evening was also spent babysitting and playing a Staff vs. Campers Volleyball game, in which we all had way cool numbers on our backs. Tons of fun! (This was also the night we found out how nuts Mary really was.)
• Thursday is when my strength started to stop flowing as easily. That day was also the day I helped fill almost 500 water balloons. (Yes, I did say 500.) That day Erik Lutz showed up as well and we had tons of fun, talking, singing, and catching up. The Gaga Ball Tournament was also Thursday, and so I got to ref that as well. And Marshall the champ from last year won again. It was a pretty amazing day!
• Friday I refed the paintball tournament, and helped with paintball target practice. I also got to hang out with this kid named Blake for pretty much the whole day. Blake's great-grandma had internal bleeding, and his great-grandpa had gone to the hospital with his wife, so Blake was pretty much on his own. So he and I even though we had spent some time before together, pretty much spent the whole day with eachother. Blake I slowly realized just wanted someone to love on him. Even though he seemed like a tough guy who liked kicking me in the shins, liked to wrestle people to the ground, and liked jumping on staffer's backs when they weren't looking, Blake just liked being around me. It taught me a lot of patience, and a lot about compassion. After Blake left early, I hung around with Eathan Carl(Brent Carl's son) and ran around with him for the rest of the afternoon. It was honestly a really great day. But in the evening the day just kept on getting better. Pastor Carl's message showed me what a great set of parents I have, and the bonfire was incredible. Not only was it huge, but Pastor Depue(like he had been doing the rest of the week) led the campers and staff in a myriad of choruses and hymns, around it. After that we had a staff debreif that really was great. (I'm kinda running out of adjectives that mean"extremely good".) We all hit the hay at 11:30 and slept in till like 7 the next morning.
• So here are two things that happened over the course of this week, that didn't really happen on one day. The first is that I was dubbed the "walking clock" since I was the only guy staffer with a watch. Like half of my conversations with people were them asking what time it was. The second thing which is way more important, is that I'm really struggling with what God wants me to do with my life. Two years ago I thought God wanted me to be a missionary. I saw signs everywhere. Then the signs sort of stopped. I thought it was God just testing me to see if I was willing(which I was). But listening to Pastor Carl talk about all the different places he had been and the people he had helped, made me want to go and do the same thing. I'm really confused right now. and I've no clue where God wants me or what I'm supposed to do. If you could pray for me that would be great.
• Saturday I finished my task area, and left camp with my "love gift"(we don't get salaries), and went to a family get together at other end of the lake with my cousins, aunt, and uncles. (I'd also like prayer for my Unlce Thad, my cousin James, my cousin Maddie, and my cousin Eathan. It was about this time of year, last year, that my Aunt Crystal was killed in a car crash. Most of them have turned their backs on God, and its really going to be tough on them this next week.) I hung out with them for a couple hours and went on a few boat rides, before we headed back home. And now I'm here righting this.

So that was my week; hopefully I'll write about next week at Camp Lamoka, but for now I'm headed to bed. Adios and God bless!