GO WILD!

In a word, summer camp was AWESOME. Period. End of story.

God kept me home this summer and away from China for a reason. I don’t know if I’ll ever know what that reason was… but I also know that God brought me to Adventure Mountain for a reason. It wasn’t a fluke.

This last week, I went as a counselor with my church to Adventure Mountain, one of the many camps offered by Forest Home. This particular camp provides a summer adventure specifically for kids going into the 5th and 6th grades. As a counselor, I was in charge of my own cabin of 7 girls (plus me)… and we all just had a blast. In fact, every time I get started talking about camp, I just can’t stop! Honestly, this is probably just the first of many blogs to come on memories and lessons learned from camp; I just feel like I have zillions of stories to share from every day I was there! There’s no way I could write about all of them, but I figured I’d at least try to hit the highlights.

My favorite memory of the whole week had to be praying with one of my girls to accept Jesus into her heart! As far as I can remember, this was my first time praying with anybody to accept Christ and it was just amazing! Just she and I prayed together — one-on-one in the cabin one night after a long day of drama (you can probably imagine with 5th/6th grade girls and one loooong week). In a nutshell, I pulled her aside one day when I realized she was having a strange attitude about some of the drama going on that didn’t even involve her. I talked to her about God’s command to forgive and about His desire for us to love other people as we love Him. When she didn’t seem to care about that, I changed the subject and asked her what she thought made her a Christian. She said that praying and going to church made her saved. I asked if she'd ever invited Jesus to come into her heart and to be a part of her life... she kinda raised her eyebrows as if that was a weird idea and finally said that she had not. After that, I talked with her, read through Scriptures, explained that this was a lifetime commitment to choose to follow Him, and asked if she wanted to ask Jesus into her heart. She shrugged. I asked if she would rather think about it and talk with me later. She shrugged again. I almost cried. After about 5 minutes of this, she finally told me she’d like to think about it. Later that night, she confidently told me that she’d made a decision and wanted to accept Christ! We prayed together right then and there… and I don’t think I’ll ever forget how ecstatic we both felt afterward when we hugged and talked about how we would both be seeing God in Heaven some day.

Aside from that, other favorite memories include…
--Winning the “cleanest cabin” competition and getting to sleep in the treehouse with my girls for the night
--Learning the “Hoedown Throwdown” dance (by Miley Cyrus)
--Getting involved in the biggest splash war known to mankind at the lake between campers and counselors
--Climbing to the top of a water tower/pickle factory thing
--Hearing my girls dedicate a song to me over the Forest Home radio
--Starting a week-long water war with a boy who wrung out his wet/dirty socks over my head
--Dancing on the tables to the “Cha Cha Slide” and “Move it, Move it” with all the other campers
--Playing Capture the Flag through the entire camp (and doing the Chicken Dance 5x to get out of “prison”)
--Getting blobbed (and hearing half the kids on the shoreline cheering for me)
--Seeing the beautiful stars in the sky at 3 in the morning after one of my girls woke me up to go to the bathroom
--Talking one-on-one with my girls and listening to their stories and everything on their heart…

I really had a ton of fun the whole time I was there and feel that for a whole week I totally came out of my shell and was comfortable being wild and crazy with all the kids. I was goofy; I was loud; I was obnoxious. And I loved every minute of it.

Before I even went to camp, I wrote that I was determined to find and to prove that a life with God is not humdrum. Adventure Mountain reiterated that fact for me and reminded me that a relationship with God is the wildest adventure I’ll ever take. It reminded me, furthermore, that if we want to live for God, we have to be ready to Let Go of anything that is holding us back. We have to get over our concerns and weaknesses and allow God to use us… even if it makes us look silly. God was doing some amazing things up there and now I just can’t wait to share about my adventures with Him or to go and have some more!