Back from Camp

I just got back from camp. Thank you all for your prayers. I was able to go the whole week without any pain meds. It was a challenging week for sure. My left ear had been plugged and didn't clear up, but I didn't have any pain going up the mountain. God is good! My sister and I decided to sing a song together (Oh, I Want to Know You More by Steve Green) for a talent show thing that they had. I'm not a big fan of "talent shows" unless they are honoring Christ in the process (which this was one did for the most part). I still don't like the name. Anyway, I was a bit concerned being able to only hear out of one ear. When I talked, it sounded loud to me, but really people couldn't hear me and I was afraid that would happen when I was singing too. Well, God cleared up my ear on Friday morning before we did it! There were many other challenges such as a nearly camp-wide stomach sickness. Just in our cabin (7 guys and two of us counselors), we had one guy in our cabin get sick on Wednesday, then I got sick on Thursday, then two guys got sick yesterday. My younger brother also got sick yesterday. Let me tell you though, God worked through it all. The first boy getting sick caused our relationship to grow for the rest of the week. He was throwing up and stuff, so it wasn't too pretty. Thankfully, I didn't throw up, but I basically slept for the entire day. I skipped lunch and tried to go to dinner. I couldn't really eat at that dinner or the next breakfast. I was just completely exhausted even though I had slept all that time. Last night, a guy threw up and so we took him down to the nurses office. I talked with the guys one last time and challenged them in several areas of their lives... put them to bed and left to take a shower. Within 10 minutes of me getting in bed, another guy threw up in the top bunk bed. At this point, I realized it was a blessing that I had already had this sickness earlier in the week because I was able to take care of these guys and not really worry about getting it again. I took him to the nurses station and was headed back when I ran across a fellow counselor about my age heading back to his cabin. I told him about what happened and he offered to help me clean it up in the middle of the night. I can't tell you how much of a blessing this was. Honestly, we were laughing about it. God was also good in that none of the guys or the other counselor in my cabin woke up during this whole episode. We just took all the stuff and dumped it outside for the night. I waited about an hour for a guy to finish up cleaning up another cabin with a similar issue. I was expecting him to bring some disinfectant or something, but he just brought scent spray stuff (which we already had). I guess everything is funny at 2 am. Anyway, we got it pretty much all cleaned up and there was nobody in the bunk below him. God was good! Jonathan also threw up last night and is still not feeling so hot, so if you could pray for him, that would be great.

God was definitely working in the hearts of these guys. It was such a blessing to be able to share some of my past failures as well as how God has been working in my life. It was amazing to see how God used the speaker to work in their hearts when it came to relationship things. The pastor was absolutely incredible. It made for some great discussions during cabin devotions. I really didn't know what I was going to talk about each day, and God continually provided exactly the words to say. He is awesome! It was definitely challenging, but totally worth it!

I would have to say that the highlight of my week was during one of the chapel times. The pastor talked about a statistic where like half of the people that claim to be Christians when they graduate will fall away from the Lord within 5 years. He had each person turn to the person next to them to realize how serious it is that one of them would not be walking with the Lord in 5 years if they followed the statistic. He gave them 8 minutes to pray with each other if they wanted to. There were three guys that had just graduated that were just kind of sitting there, so I thought I'd see if I could pray with them. It was such a blessing to hear their hearts and to be able to pray with them and for them that God would hold them close and pursue them continually like He has done for me.