Major Catch-up

(Okay, so I wrote this like 5 days ago and need to get more pictures, which is why I haven't posted it yet, but I'm just going to anyway. I'll edit it and post more pictures shortly, I have to get them from other people, so for now, here it is.)

I can't believe it's only been 10 days since I last wrote. I feel like it's been a month and I'm way behind. So much has happened, and I've wanted to write so many times, but just haven't had the time.

My week without Lisa here went okay. It was busy and hard, but by God's grace I got through it and was able to savor the last couple days with our second session waterfront crew. I was definitely exhausted, but the Lord got me through it, and it definitely made me appreciate Lisa.

A while ago on our day off we went cliff jumping. It was so much fun! I had been wanting to go for a long time, and we finally got around to doing it. It was definitely a thrill and we had some good intern bonding time. That morning we also did the ropes course just for fun and it was awesome. I love the swing at the end! It was a day full of high heights and adrenaline. It was awesome.

Pamper pole. There is no way I could jump that far!

Then that week we went bowling as a whole intern group for Bible Study. We had the whole alley to ourselves and it was the place where you keep your own score. It was so much fun! I was in a lane with Kyle (who I think I've mentioned as one of my favorite people ever, he's on property staff here) so of course my goal for the night was to beat him. He's actually a really good bowler, and my bowling skills have gone down the drain. But I did beat him! Yay! I was really excited, just because I get to rub it in his face. (granted, he got 170 something the first game while I got like 80 something, and then I beat him by a couple points the second game, but hey, a win is a win.) Don't worry, I'm not at all competitive :) But it was a really fun night and we all went out for ice cream afterwards.

Kyle and me!

Some of the guys dressed up. Chocklett looked ridiculous, yet somehow pulled it off.

Matt Shortt and I with our shakes!

Our second session summer staffers have left and our third session has arrived. I have to say, I was so sad to see our July session leave. I really enjoyed getting to know them and working with them. They were a fantastic group of people who have hearts for the Lord. It was amazing to see the changes in them in the month that they were here. They really embraced the experience and stepped up to the plate. We had a great last couple days and they definitely finished strong. I miss them all dearly.

On switch over day I was able to spend time with my best friend Amy! It was amazing! I met Amy here, at Champion, last year during summer staff, and somehow, over the past year, we've managed to stay in really good touch with each other. I hadn't seen her since Thanksgiving, and it was SO awesome to see her again. We were able to catch up, and hang out, and it was really super awesome. She came to visit just for one night, but I loved every minute of it. I love that girl dearly, and as we are oh so different, which makes me laugh, we are real with each other and challenge each other in our walks with the Lord. Through her, God has shown me what fellowship looks like, and I love it. It was so amazing to see her!

While second session is gone, it is great to welcome in nine new waterfront summer staffers. We definitely have a great group and I am looking forward to getting to know them better. It is a lot of work though. I have to build relationships with them, we had to go through and train all over again and just getting to know them takes time. I am excited though. August is such a great session to work since it is our "off" month, meaning we have groups other than the normal suburban high school young life. Right now we have wyld life kids (middle school), next week is young lives (teenage moms) and the next is urban. I'm super stoked. I know the Lord has so much still to teach me.

The summer is nearing it's end and it makes me so sad. It has flown by faster than I could have ever imagined. I knew it would be fast, but I never thought it would be this fast. I have loved it. Ever minute of it. This is the most amazing job anyone could ever have. The Lord has been teaching me a lot as well. So many little things in so many different ways and areas of my life. My heart is on fire though. I want to tell the world about Jesus. I want to share the gospel with every person I meet, even those who have heard it hundreds of times. It gets better and better every time. It makes me realize how in need of his grace I am. This has been an amazing season so far, it's definitely not over quite yet, but I've been loving it.

Sorry this is getting really long, but one other thing I wanted to add in, was the amazing night I had the other night. We had Bible study on a different night than we typically do because of the changes in our schedule due to it being wyld life and not young life. Bible study night all of the interns have off, and we all had off the next day as well. So we had Bible study, which was great, then went over to Cory and Jess' house and had milk shakes, and then we finally went over to canoe breakfast. We've been talking about doing it all summer, and we finally did it. We had every single intern go over to the other side of the lake and we built a fire and sat around and got to know each other better. It was a miracle that we were all together; all seventeen of us. That never happens. We sat around the fire and played hot seat, which essentially is ask someone a bunch of questions and get to know them better. I loved it. It was my favorite night here so far. We were out until like 3 in the morning, which everyone here can tell you, is WAY past my bedtime. But I loved it, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

The next day we all slept in, I played frisbee golf with some of the interns, it started raining while we were playing, after that I went for a run in the pouring down rain. I'm not really a running in the rain kind of person, but I absolutely loved it! I just got to pray, and exercise and spend time with the Lord. It was so much fun, I enjoyed it so much! We then all went into town and went to the mall, a couple interns got tattoos and we went and hung out with them. It was really fun. We were all together for the majority of the two days and it was such a sweet time of team building and getting to know one another better. My favorite thing ever. The Lord continues to bless me in so many ways.

A Day of Complete Chaos

Talk about a crazy day! Not only were Lisa and Bob both not here, but there were so many unexpected bumps and turns along the way. I had to do the morning set up on my own, which is harder, but not impossible. I wanted to see how fast I could do it, cause once I finish, I'm done until breakfast. Last time I finished everything with an hour left, I was hoping to have an hour and a half so I could spend some time with the Lord and then take a nap.

Quiet time and a nap both didn't happen. As I was testing chemicals in the hot tub, one of my summer staffers called me over and said that the wakeboarding rope got sucked up in the engine. Unexpected situation number one. So, I called Guest Services on the radio and Scott went to go get the trailer to pull the boat out of the water. I got the other boat and towed the broken one in. We got the boat out, got the rope out and I went to dock the boat. As I was pulling away from the trailer I heard a funny noise. It sounded like change dropped off the boat. I stopped, looked behind me, didn't see anything, and just figured it was the tractor and trailer because Scott was pulling them away. I dock the boat and Scott comes back. He's looking around and says to me that he thinks something bad just happened. His keys and radio were on the back of the boat, and were now in the water. Unexpected situation number two. I had an awesome summer staff girl get her bathing suit on and go look for them. It was a lost cause. We looked for a while, but didn't find them. I hate defeat.

So then, it was about 10 minutes before breakfast, I still hadn't taken the lost and found back, never finished the hot tub chemicals, had to take canoe breakfast stuff back to the kitchen, needed to take the trash to the dumpster and jet boat dock the other boat. Mad chaos. Somehow most things got done, but I was late to breakfast. I ate as fast as I could (which, granted isn't all that fast) and then had to set things up for the morning event. Today was my event, so I have to set it up, help the summer staff and make sure things run smoothly. Due to some miscommunication and exhaustion, it was 11 o'clock, when our event was supposed to start and not even half of the summer staffers were there. About six of them (who are amazingly awesome) helped Derrick and I get everything and set everything up. It was crazy. They're supposed to be there at 10:30, and people rolled in after 11. Unexpected situation number three.

So after the Spartan games (my event) the waterfront was open. Kyle was driving and I was taking care of things on land, when all of a sudden over the radio, I hear "This is a drill, code grey, this is a drill, code grey." Code grey is our "terrorist on camp" code. Taken very seriously. Unexpected situation number four. I got the air horn, blew it five times, which means it's an emergency, and all campers have to report to the club room as quickly as possible. Chaos. We had to get every person in the club room and account for every single person on camp. It's a drill we have to do once a summer, and it is random. No one knows when it will happen at all, not even the property staff. Overall, I heard it went smoothly, so that was good. Lunch then got pushed back and we opened the waterfront up again. Kyle wasn't able to drive anymore, which Mikey (my intern from last year who is here leading) noticed and went to get on the boat, as I was asking Paige to take Waileen's job so she could go drive. The tube rope then snapped and we had to replace it. No big deal, just the craziness of the day. Then we had lunch.

Really. It was crazy. Utter chaos, but then things turned around for the most part. No more unexpected situations, just normal waterfront tasks. It was a shorter day, which is nice, but we do have to work tonight. I'm about to go take a nap so I can survive staying up tonight and doing the morning on my own again.

The awesome thing about all of this though, is that God is so faithful! It was crazy, and stressful, and things didn't go the way they were supposed to at all, but it was okay. I was okay. The Lord showed me so much grace. I didn't freak out, I didn't go crazy, I just took it as it came and tried to deal with it. There is no way I could have done it on my own. It was all God. He gave me so much patience and so much grace. He is quite an awesome God. I am continually blown away. I felt his shalom in the midst of the chaos.

Reliance

I so wish I was better at this and had more time. I feel like I'm constantly playing catch-up. Things here have been good. Really great actually. This past week the Lord just kept reminding me and showing me that I have the best job anyone could ask for! I get to drive boats, hang out with kids, take care of my summer staffers and have a hand in high schoolers meeting the Lord, what more could you want?! I love being on the water driving a boat. One of my favorite things in the world! It's up there with heart to heart conversations, pole vaulting and diving. I just love it. The Lord has been so gracious to me and showered me with his love this week. I love being here, and this is where I know I am supposed to be.

I wish I had more time to blog. Being a man short on the waterfront makes things more hectic, and things that I would be able to do during the day, I now have to do later, and so don't have the time to blog that I would like. There are many random blogs I would like to write. Things I'm learning, things I'm realizing about myself, what is going on at Crossroads and my community group, things like that. I just haven't had the chance to yet. Hopefully in the near future, but most likely not this week.

I have to say that I am constantly pushing back anxiety and stress about the rest of this week. We just finished Day 2 and I am on my own until Day 7, when we train the new summer staffers. Lisa left to go to a family reunion type of thing, so I'm holding down the waterfront on my own. Bob is also gone and won't be back until Tuesday afternoon, so I'm really on my own. It really shouldn't be too bad, I don't know why I'm getting overwhelmed. The hardest part is going to be the mornings, just doing all the things that we have to do on my own. It's not bad, I've done it a ton before, but not so many days in a row. Kyle is going to drive all day tomorrow and help me out and stuff, so it should be fine. I don't know, I'm definitely being challenged and pushed to be completely dependent on the Lord. I can't handle it all on my own. I need him. I am utterly desperate and have to rely on him for strength.

Please pray for grace and patience for me this week. It is also our last week with this group of summer staff and I'm really going to miss them. They are a really great group. Please pray that we finish the session strong and rise to the occasion. Please pray for our summer staff group that is coming in. Please pray that all the spots would be filled and people would come eager to work and serve. Also, please pray that my friend Pierre would come next session. It's been back and forth, and at this point, I don't think he's coming. I would love for him to come, and I think it would be really good for him too. Please pray he comes! Love you all!

Sweet Time

Thursday night I hung out with Melissa, my mentor. She is awesome and I love hanging out with her. We went into Port Jervis and sat outside an ice cream shop for a while and just talked. We've just been getting to know each other better and it's been a lot of fun. We drove back here at camp and the twenty minutes was just about to start. This is something that we do for the campers. We send them out during club and we give them twenty minutes by themselves to talk to God. We turn off all the lights around camp and it's an awesome opportunity for the campers to just talk to God. For a lot of them it is their first time, or when they decide that they want to follow Christ. So Melissa and I sat in the car and prayed during that time. We had had some great conversations about prayer and prayer is continuing to be a theme in my life. I am so curious and eager to learn more and more about prayer and the power it has. It was great to spend an extended time of prayer with someone.

I had mentioned to Melissa as well that I had really been wanting to do prayer and worship times with the interns. We have Bible study once a week, but I need something more than that and I really believe it is something that will grow us closer to one another and to the Lord. I had been thinking about it for a while, but hadn't mentioned anything to anyone. She really encouraged me to step forward and say something and that a lot of the time it just takes one person saying something and it makes the world of difference. So she told me she was going to hold me accountable to it and that next time we hang out she is going to ask me about it. Accountability is so good, hard sometimes, but so good.

Friday I had off. It was a really chill day, kind of boring, but it was good. I pretty much just hung out for most of the day. A bunch of interns were gone, only like four of us were around. Brittany and I went fishing. We caught a ton of seaweed, but no fish. It was an awesome time to just hang out and be real with one another though. I've had some really great conversations with her and I've really enjoyed getting to know her better. While we were talking I mentioned the whole prayer and worship idea to her and she thought people would want to do it. I had a lot of fun just hanging out with her and talking about our relationships with the Lord and what we've learned since we've been here.

Yesterday was a good day. Day one, week six. New campers arrived and the rain held out until dinner, which was awesome. I ran back from dinner in the pouring rain, changed, and then had a little worship and prayer time with a small group of interns. It was so good. So necessary, and so filling. In the busyness of it all, we sometimes loose track of why we're here and when we pray and worship together, we get refocused. We then just talked. We shared ways we had seen the Lord in the past couple days, and Brittany shared her testimony. It was just an awesome, sweet time. Those kinds of hang out nights are by far my favorite. I would so much rather pray and share than sit down and watch a movie together. It was one of my favorite nights so far.

Today was a great day as well. Nothing too exciting happened. It was sunny all day! That is great news. There wasn't a single cloud in the sky! It was great. We also got a new person on waterfront yesterday. His name is Donald, and he is awesome. He is a really hard worker and has had an amazing attitude about having to leave bikes and join the waterfront. It's only been two days and I can already tell that he is a great addition to our group. He is already helping us build unity and strive for fellowship with one another.

I'm planning on going to entertainment night tonight, where the leaders do funny skits for the campers, and then heading to bed. I have a long day tomorrow because I run the morning event, but it should be a good one.

Please pray for the campers, that their hearts would be open and they would be willing to receive the amazing gift Christ offers them. Please pray for the leaders, that they would seek the Lord in their leadership and would set an awesome example for their campers. Please pray that the waterfront would grow closer together and Lisa and I would lead them well. Please pray for strength and rest for me. Thank you so much for praying! Love you all!

Catch-Up

Wow...it has been WAY too long. I have so much to catch up on. So many things I have stored in my head that I want to talk about, and they may not all come out. I'll start with two weeks back, bible study.

The interns all have Bible study and the night off together on day 5. I love it. It's my favorite night. It's the only time in the week that everyone is together. Two weeks ago, instead of going doing Bible study we got to go on an intern outing. It was so much fun! We went over to lighthouse (where a bunch of property people live) and we shot a bunch of Kyle's guns. We first shot skeet, then a hand gun and some other gun that was really loud. It was a new experience for most of us and it was just so awesome to all be together.

Lisa, Krissa and Me!
Kyle teaching me how to shoot the hand gun

This one was really loud and had a really big backfire

After shooting we went to The Corner which isn't too far and all got ice cream. It was super fun and I enjoyed every minute of it.

There is so much to catch up on, I don't even know where to begin. All my days and weeks have gotten mixed up and out of order. We had a switch-over day. Our First session assignment team, summer staff and work crew left and our second session came. We had everyone pass their boat test and lifeguard certification, which is awesome. We have 2 guys and 6 girls on waterfront. We have a really awesome group of people. They are really hard workers and we all share a passion in getting deeper in our relationships with the Lord. We have a really great group, but it's still been hard. We are short a person, which gives Lisa and I twice as much work during the day. This entire work crew and summer staff session is short. There are a bunch of people who backed out at the last minute, or just didn't show up. So it's been really hard on everyone.

Being a person short on the waterfront means that we don't have a floater, which is someone who goes around and checks on everyone, gives bathroom breaks, and does any extra jobs we have, like making sure tubes are blown up and cleaning filters, and things like that. So Lisa and I now have to do all that on top of everything else. It hasn't been too bad, it's just a lot. The hardest part is doing rotations because we get stuck in a lifeguard chair for an hour, but so far we've made it work out.

And now, there is another little issue. We now have a waterfront girl who is going home. I think for a combination of reasons, but none the less we will be down another person. And this is where we get into a little bit of an issue. We have to have 8 people to run the waterfront. So what are we going to do? Not sure yet.

The awesome thing is that I'm not stressing about it. It is totally out of my hands and God has given me so much peace. My concern is just for the campers. We may have to have certain parts of the waterfront open at certain times of the day because we can't open them all at once, which would really stink. That would just be annoying for the campers and I really don't want this to affect them at all. We've been looking and calling for backups, and I'm not sure how that has been going yet, but if you know anyone who would like to come serve for two or two and half weeks, please let me know!

I've done so many fun things in the last two weeks, lots of them small, but just fun things.

My mentor for the summer is Melissa. She is Chad's (the camp manager) wife. They live on camp and have four kids. Hannah, Luke and Caleb who are twins and then Micah. They are awesome. I've had so much fun getting to know Melissa and hanging out with her and her family is so great as well. Last week I went over for family dinner with them and it was so much fun! I love being in the craziness of a four child household. We had dinner and then we played wii bowling. It was so much fun. They're such a great family and I'm so glad Melissa and I were placed together. They're like my Lake Champion family. I love that everywhere I go, God places me in a family, even if it's not my own.

The other day I went with their family and some other people from camp to see the town fireworks. It was really fun and really cold. The fireworks were a little interesting. There would be about 5 fireworks, and then a 2 minute wait, then another 5 fireworks and another 2 minute delay. We ended up leaving early, but it was still really fun.

Here are all the kids who went to see fireworks!
Me and Micah! He is so stinkin cute!

One really special thing I got to do last week was on the waterfront. Last week we had a camper, Aaron, who had some physical disabilities. I'm not sure what it was, but he was in a wheelchair most of them time. He was really awesome and wanted to make sure he experienced everything at camp. One day he went on the zip-line, another day he went through the whole ropes course, with the help of Kyle and Bob and then one day he tubed and blobbed. We got out the big three person tube that we use for younglives and Aaron, his dad and friend all tubed. And I got the awesome privilege of driving them! It was so much fun. Aaron's leader, Caleb, spotted for them and the whole time Aaron was telling me to go faster. Caleb was telling me that he was really tough and a thrill seeker, so I gave them as good of a ride as I could, I didn't hold back. It was so much fun! We then helped Aaron blob, which was also awesome. It was so much fun to see him experience camp.

Those are just some of the really cool things that have happened recently. I will try really hard to keep you updated. Things have just been hard being a man down and my schedule has gotten a lot crazier.