Mark

Our summer staff have arrived and camp has started! It has been amazing. Busy, exhausting, fun, spirit filled, and amazing. Our waterfront summer staff are great! We have a good group of hard workers, which is exactly what we need. For those of you who don't know, summer staff are college students who volunteer for a month to serve the campers and run camp. Lisa and I, the waterfront interns, are in charge of 9 waterfront summer staffers. They run the waterfront, and we just make sure everything goes smoothly. They are a great group. We have lots of energy in our group which is soon going to be crucial.

I have to share this story with you, because it just makes me smile. Our God is so faithful! He is so good and so much bigger than we could ever imagine!

Okay, so because our summer staffers are on the waterfront, they have to be lifeguards. To make it easier for them, we do a life guarding class here at camp before things start so they can all get certified. So our summer staffers came earlier than most.

Thursday morning at breakfast there were a few new faces. These are the waterfront summer staffers. So I go around and introduce myself and there is this guy there that looks really familiar. I feel like I know him somehow, but I have no idea how. I just figured he looked like someone. He said his name was Mark. Sounded right, but still didn't ring a bell. I didn't say anything to him and just figured I was going crazy.

So half way through the day he turns to me and says he can't figure out where he knows me from. Okay good, I'm not crazy! I told him he looked really familiar too and I didn't know how I knew him. We ran through everything. He's from Pennsylvania, he's two years younger than me, no relation to anyone, nothing. I asked him if he had ever been to Champion before. He said he came as a camper two years ago. At first he thought it was in July, but we figured out it was in June, which is when I did summer staff two years ago. Crazy.

So after talking we figured out that he was one of those campers just like me. They LOVE tubing! When I did summer staff here two years ago, I loved hanging out with and getting to know the campers who were like me. I loved doing tube check out and learning the names of the crazy kids who loved tubing as much as I did. Mark was one of those guys. We couldn't believe that after two years we still recognized each other. God works in mysterious ways.

Saturday I got a chance to chat with Mark while we were getting drinks for everyone and hear parts of his testimony.

He met the Lord here, two years ago.

I got to indirectly be a piece of his testimony. That's awesome.

He had never heard the gospel before, until camp at Champion two years ago in June. And now, He has turned from the ways of the world and is living a life that longs to further The Kingdom! God is so good! Mark is now sacrificing a month of his time and energy to give campers the same experience he was given.

It was so awesome to see the reward of my month in June of 2007. What a gift from God. It is so great that he would encourage me right from the beginning that the work I am doing here actually is expanding The Kingdom. It is so humbling that he would choose to use me. I am nothing. He is everything.

I just saw this as a testament to God's faithfulness and power. I am daily in awe. It is also an awesome circle of Young Life. That Mark came as a camper while I was here, got saved, is now a leader himself, and is one of my summer staffers. So awesome. So encouraging.

This is such a great reminder for me as well. The long days, early mornings and extreme exhaustion are beyond worth it to know that lives are being changed. The Kingdom will grow by the thousands this summer because of Young Life camps around the world! And that is a testament to the Lord, not Young Life. I feel so honored to be a part of it. It makes it all so worth it to know that high schoolers are hearing, learning about and meeting Jesus, Our Savior who took my sin upon himself so that I could have a relationship with him. Man, God is good!