Have you ever been in charge of doing a particular task and then someone comes in and does that task for you? How about in a way that you think isn’t as good as your own method?

This is something that I learned about this week. For this summer and the last, we had a particular week where youth groups from around the southern portions of the state were invited to come out and experience youth group camp style. Many of the people on staff this year might complain that it was the worst week we’ve had yet this summer. However, if you look at it from a different perspective (which I suggest doing anytime you think something’s happening out of your control), it is possible that the week was much better for the staff than we thought.

So, I’m going to start from the beginning just to bring us all to the same page.

Youth Group Week is a relatively new thing we do here at the camp. By new, I mean we’ve only done it twice, once in ’09 and once in ’10. During this week a couple, Ken and Julie, comes in and leads all of the chapel times according to their own program. Also, youth groups and their leaders come to experience camp. So what this means to a staff member like myself is that our place in both the chapel and cabin suddenly becomes much lower. We lose control over how long chapel times are and what events/games are done in the chapel. Then in the cabin, the kids have come with their youth leader. This means we no longer are the ultimate authority in the cabin. We don’t lead small group time as much, if at all, and the youth leader has greater learned authority over the kids (this just means that the kids have already learned submit to their youth minister).

Now, the view point that is easiest for myself to look through and possibly other staff is, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know what’s going on or why I’m here. This sucks.” This is so easy to come to, especially in ministry, when an authority comes up over you that you previously didn’t have. But, this is also where I believe that the staff was taught a very valuable and christian lesson. If Jesus were to come to Camp St. Christopher and talk with us for a while, hear our complaints about the last week, and teach us, I believe He would say something like, “Was it not I who put that authority over you?” and then He might remind us of the times that he became lower so that we might have more authority. He might also tell us about humility and how the week that we lost control was to teach us humility.

The week didn’t go as planned for any of us. The activities were harder, the chapel was much longer and it was hard to sit through as a spectator, and there was a general  sense of unease throughout the staff for atleast the first half of the week. The campers didn’t seem like they were getting what ever it was we were trying to teach and the music ministry seemed to have little to no impact on them at all. But by the end of the week, we discovered that the campers were experiencing a much different thing than we had been. These kids were coming from a place where most of them had already been saved and they were not in need of evangelistic ministry which is the type of ministry that we had been doing all summer long. This week was about discipling (disciple + ing) them as Christians and teaching them what a true community of believers looks like. The kids were taught unity in purpose and in worship. They learned more about how to read scripture and even how to wrestle over its meaning (a skill we should all have as christians).

This week, on its front, looked like a failure, however, upon further inspection there was greater success than the staff knew. We had been looking for the obvious lesson and failed to see the one that was being taught to us. We were looking at the outward appearance but disregarded the matters of the heart. I began looking at souls won to the cross as the ultimate goal and forgot that Christianity that only evangelizes is shallow. Good, but shallow.We must become less so that Jesus will be made more as one apostle proclaimed. Perhaps this week, when we lost our control of the camp, we were taught a lesson in becoming less.

Christ be glorified,

Adam

That week at camp was 4-6th graders and they were probably my most challenging bunch of kids. I had to be extra hard on them the first night or two but then realized that that approach wasn’t working. I decided to accept their rowdiness and employ my authority more subtly. I’m not quite sure what that means but that’s what I did. Eventually, the kids and I came to an agreement on acceptable behavior, but that was the day their parents came so we never got a chance to experience a great day.

Anyway, even though they were my most challenging campers they were also my favorite cabin yet this summer. I became good friends with all of them and hope to see them again some day.

Now, on to the good stuff. (not that that stuff wasn’t good, it was just that for those 2 weeks I didn’t have much to write about)

This last week was Senior Session. During this week kids from 9th-12th grade come and we do all sorts of activities that we don’t usually do. For example, we had blindfolded Lightsaber battles (before you start dialing child protection, there were safety precautions taken), Lair (which is much like lightsaber battles but with carboard swords and a different rule set), grilling, cheerleading, soccer, outdoor skills, senior kayaking trip (this is the only kayaking trip we take during the whole summer that actually crosses the channel and ends on the island opposite us), and a dance.

I’m sure there were other unusual activities but I can’t think of them at the moment. I was out of cabin this week so I became more of a support staff during the session. On monday, I mopped after dinner and then set up snack for after chapel. Tuesday I drove the rescue boat for 3 hours, then went and played drums with the worship team during the evening chapel. Wednesday, again I drove the rescue boat for 3 hours and then went to practice with the worship team except that I ran sound and video and let our other drummer play. Thursday, I taught the outdoor skills class in the morning which turned out to be pretty fun. I gave them a run over of trip planning and camp equipment and then we went on a 2-3 mile hike.

That evening I played the drums during the communion service which, instead of a full band with 3 guitars, a drumer, a bass player and a back up vocalist, was just myself on djembe and the worship leader on guitar. We were also using the outdoor chapel for this service to it was already unusual. Right after we opened with music, we had some time where the chaplain said to the campers, “We’re going to take 15 minutes and go down to the beach to wait for the Lord to give you a sign of His glory. If you’re not interested, please don’t come.” At this, all 150 campers rose quietly and went down to the beach and waited and prayed. I stayed behind for a moment to catch all the paper that was blowing around (we had the liturgy for the service printed out for them) and then I went down to the beach.

The sight that met my eyes was something that I will never forget. There were campers standing in the water, or sitting on the beach, or lying on there backs (or faces), or dancing, but all of them were standing there waiting for God. The lighting was all weird. The campers were all bright, the sky was dark, a patch of the ocean in front of 2 of the campers was dark and choppy and the rest was calm. The clouds were moving quickly and they were dark, but they were splitting and going on either side of the camp. There were seagulls and pelicans flying in circles up in the sky around the camp. As soon as I saw the campers, I knew I was seeing God’s glory laid out upon them. But God also used the sand to remind me that he had made a covenant with Abraham and that I was part of that covenant through Jesus. I wish I could revisit that sight, but it will never be that way again.

During the week, we had a great harvest of campers come to Christ and were saved. Many more were broken and had sin removed from there lives and from there hearts and then put back together (this is evidence at the working of the Holy Spirit). Others were called to become missionaries and they accepted the call. Still more observed the power of God and His authority over them and over life. There were also the stalwart unbelievers that refused the Gospel. Many became angry with the chaplain because he was revealing to them their sin. Many hardened there hearts, but others took a look at there lives and were softened.

God did a great work in the lives of the campers and I was blessed to be there to see it. Much more happened during the week than I was witness to but I have written what I can for now. I leave you with a verse:

For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.

Ephesians 6:12

In Christ,

Adam

ps. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment.

I write to you on the cusp of my roommates wedding. He got married yesterday afternoon and is now off on the adventure of a lifetime. The wedding was beautiful and the two served the congregation communion as a new family. The reception was a blast and quite a few of our friends showed up to join in on the festivities.

But, I don’t want to write to you about that. I do want to write about my experiences this previous week at camp though.

This week was middle school students, which I’m sure many of you remember as some of the worst years of your life. This age group is beginning to or has already experienced that glorious transition called puberty and it’s written in the new acne and cracking voices. I was out of cabin this week so I didn’t get much face to face experience with them, but I’ve been told that when they came in, they were a tough bunch of kids. At the beginning of the week, we experienced a lot of resistance to the programs and activities we were doing. But, we persevered anyway.

Looking back, I led very few activities during the week. In fact, the only one I remember leading was climbing wall one day. That being said, I was playing with the worship team during the evening services. This is where much of my experience comes from for the week.

On the first night the campers arrived, Ben (worship team leader) and I spent some time praying and deciding on what songs to play. His main concern was that he didn’t want to blow them away or make them super uncomfortable with intimate praise music. He figured that there were probably kids in the crowd who had never heard said music and would be weirded out to see some of the others worshiping to it. I prayed silently that he would not be afraid to sound like a fool.

When the campers arrived in the chapel and the service started going, we went onto the stage, took up our instruments, and began playing. The song we played was ok, and the kids didn’t really respond to it. On the next song though, Ben stopped singing and began speaking to the kids about the significance of the words they were saying and encouraged them really sing them as if they were their own words. They did, and that was the first sign.

After playing our first 3 songs, we went back stage (which is really just a closet on the side of it) and listened to the speakers give their talks. Each night, one of the staff members would share a portion of their testimony that related to the story of Jonah, then the chaplain for the week would come and teach about Jonah, one chapter at a time. When the 2 were finished speaking, we went back out on stage to sing a final song and send the campers on to snack and bed time. The campers really got into the final song and when it was over they were told them that they could stay in the chapel to pray or keep singing or they could go to snack. Most of the campers went to snack, but about 20-30 remained in the chapel, which is a lot more than I’ve seen stay on the first night of a session. That was the second sign.

The signs I keep mentioning are the signs that God was going to make this week way more than we ever anticipated. In fact, on the first night, Ben said, “I didn’t expect for that to happen!” He was referring to the campers worshiping God in the way they did with so little resistance to Him.

The campers kept staying after chapel more and more throughout the week. They began to change and grow during small groups with their cabins and some even began to step out and act in their faith. By thursday, more than half of the campers were staying in the chapel to sing and pray and receive prayer. We did communion that evening and also had campfire afterward. Campfire is one of our more popular events and many of the campers missed it because they stayed in the chapel. By friday, when the offer of snack was given, it was politely ignored and campers nearly all stayed rooted in place to sing and pray. The call was given for campers who had not accepted Jesus as their savior to do so, they did. By saturday, I heard stories of kids leading other kids to christ, and counselors and staff doing the same thing. In fact on just friday night, one kid led 4 others in prayer to accept Jesus, the director had 5 kids ask for the same prayer, several counselors and staff members were also asked the same. I may never know how many souls were saved this week, but the evidence is there that many were.

The campers astonished us with their zeal to not only worship God, but to step out in faith and act according to His leading. This is to me one of the greatest weeks I’ve ever known and it only makes me more excited to see what’s coming in the future sessions!

Now, there were some other events that I participated in, such as sandcastle building. As a staff member, I’m not asked to make a castle or anything like that. I’m just there to help keep the kids from going into the ocean and drowning. I ended up digging up a bunch of sand and providing Free Sand to the campers. At one point, I had to break up a small argument over who would get the free sand, which is ridiculous because the whole beach is made of sand. But, they liked it and I had fun.

In the end, I’m left with just this. Salvation is for people of all ages and yet, no one can save themselves. Not me, not the campers, the only one that can save is Jesus and He is offering it to you as well. One of my favorite verses (Rom. 5:8) says, “But God demonstrates his love for us in this, while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” The only sinless man in history, died on a cross with the burden of your sins on his shoulders because He was demonstrating God’s love for you. The crazy thing is that this man was and is God. He rose again after he died to show us that not even death can keep him down.

In Christ,

Adam

When I got my new cabin list, the nurse pulled me aside and told me that I had a few campers that had some medical issues that I might have to deal with during the week. One had asthma, another had unexplained anaphylaxia issues. For those of you who don’t know, that just means he has some severe allergic reaction to something, but what that thing is hasn’t been discovered. I also found out when I got my list that I would have 9 campers instead of the usual 8 and 4 of those campers would be 2 different sets of twins and still further, 1 of the 9 kids belonged to my boss’s boss.

Anyway, the week started off pretty normal. The first night, the campers are usually trying the boundaries and whatnot so they were expected to be a touch on the rowdy side. These guys surprised me though because they made it to bed on time with only some prompting from me.

The next day, I didn’t see my kids very much at all. I was leading kayaking and they were off seining in the morning. In the afternoon they were off somewhere else and I was leading climbing wall activities. So, I didn’t get to see them much during that day, but in the evening when it was lights out, I found out that 2 campers had switched bunks and it was because they thought they had bad behavior the night before and wanted to change that. It still surprises me that they would do this on their own accord.

The next day was a busy day from me, or more specifically, night. I was on bell duty for the day so that meant that my campers would be leading compline, the evening liturgy. I was also scheduled to give my testimony that night. So, that’s what I did. My campers did a good job of doing compline and my testimony went well, though it was much shorter than I had anticipated. After the evening service I took my campers back to the cabin and that’s when all the speed bumps occured during the amazingly smooth week.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Silly Bands, they are basically just rubber bands that are in the shape of various things like animals, religious symbols, super heroes and other random things. I had to take about 60 silly bands from 4 of my campers because they were using them to shoot things at each other. Then I had a camper get a migraine and I had to take him to the nurse. Then I had a camper get really homesick and when I took him outside to calm him down, I found out that 2 of my campers had been bullying him. So I had to take them outside and make sure that they understood that that was not going to be tolerated in my cabin or at the camp (don’t worry, there was no physical action taken to prove this point to them).

The only real blessing I remember from that day was that one of my campers told me that he felt that God wanted him to lead someone to Christ during the session.

The next day, which was thursday, was also mudpit day. For some reason, I just wasn’t feeling like going to the mudpit and somehow God provided a way for me not to. I was on rescue boat for the morning activity and there ended up being no wind at all for the sailors. I almost had to tow one back but he decided it was better to walk a sailboat half a mile down the beach than to receive the “tow of shame.” I let him and then went on to the kayakers to give them a wake or 2 to kayak over. The water was glassy smooth so the kayaking was kinda boring. Anyway, because there was no wind for the activity, the director decided to offer those cabins a chance to go sailing during the mudpit time. I got go on the rescue boat during this make up sailing session and didn’t have to get stinky nasty.

That night, we had communion. This was an amazing time for our campers and there was some intense Jesus worshiping going on. The camper that told me that he felt that God was calling him to lead someone to Christ ended up doing just that. He prayed for this kid and asked him if he wanted to accept Jesus as his savior. The kid said yeah and they prayed right there.

The next day was move out day, and that closed out the week.

Random things that I couldn’t fit into the narrative:

One of my campers got stung by a wasp and dropped his icecream. Another one of my campers bought him a new one.

The 2 kids that I was warned about with medical issues had little to no trouble with them

I was able to play as the voice of God during the Jonah skits. This was pretty fun because at the last meeting, nobody knew where I was but they could still hear the voice.

Wednesday was also Disney Day so we all dressed up as disney characters. I was Mufassa, but my costume ended up looking like a really bad spray-on tan and I couldn’t get the orange out of my eye brows and facial hair for the rest of they day.

That’s all I can think of at the moment. I will be out of cabin next week so I won’t get as much face time with campers but I will still be leading in activities and playing drums during worship time. Next weekend is my friends wedding so that will be on my list of things to think about/do.

I hope your week is great.

In Christ,

Adam

So, I guess we start with monday and roll on through the week.

I was in cabin for the week so I’m just going to give the details from my cabin and the sparse tidbits I picked up from the other cabins. I had a counselor in cabin with me too for the first time. If you’re confused about the positions, my role is traditionally called counselor and the other guys role is usually called counselor in training. The only difference that I know is that as staff members, we’re all trained in all of the activities and could be lifeguarding, rock climbing, doing archery, leading games, announcing meals, planning and preparing for new events, and pretty much everything that’s not paperwork that needs to be done around camp.

Back to the story… I got my counselor in and we prepped the cabin for our kids to come in. We did a bunk by bunk prayer kind of thing where he prayed for half of the kids that would be sleeping in the bunks and I prayed for the other half (not half of each child, half of all the children). Shortly after the prayers, parents arrived to drop their kids off and we moved to the front porch. Instead of just patiently waiting for the parents to come and find where they were going to drop their kids off, we decided to spice things up. We spent all that afternoon yelling to everybody that walked by. We were yelling things like, “MORE CAMPERS!” “WHERE?” “RIGHT THERE!” “I LOVE CAMPERS!” Then we would ask where they were headed and point them in the right direction. Over all, that was probably one of the funest things I’ve done yet here at camp.

We got all our kids settled in and sent off the parents fairly quickly. There were several things I noticed about my kids when I walked in after the last parent left. One of the kids was extremely homesick already (I’ll say more about him later). Three of the others were the rambunctious too-cool-for-school types. The others were fairly quiet and well behaved.

I got them ready for their first activity, which was seining, and sent them off to the chapel with the counselor. I of course went with them, but I had to leave them so I could get ready for my activity after the chapel, which was archery. I dressed up with a bandana to cover my face, sunglasses for the eyes, and a cowboy hat, then I grabbed a bow and snuck up on them while they were on their way to the activity. I was going for the bandit look, but they all thought I was Robin Hood. Anyhow, I went over the process of stringing a bow and all the rules that we enforce at our archery range. Then we divided the group in half and set them on 2 different targets.

Nothing super adventurous went on at the range, but it was overall a good time. Shortly after archery was dinner and then chapel. The real adventure came when we got the kids back into cabin to have them go to bed that night. We had lot’s of running around, hitting, yelling, and whatnot that you’d expect to see from kids their age. I quickly put an end to all of that though and made sure they were doing their quiet time books, which turned out to be them yelling answers back and forth to each other. I let them do this for a bit, then had them get ready for bed and turned out the lights. They didn’t want to get quiet so I used one of the threats I’d heard from one of the other staff members. He said that he always tells the kids that he’s going to wake them up at 4:30 in the morning and start reading from Leviticus to the end of Deuteronomy and that they were not going to go to breakfast or any of the other activities until they finished reading them. My kids challenged me on this until I told them that those were the books of the law. They all shushed each other after that and went right to sleep.

The next day my kids went to chapel right after breakfast and then to their first activity. In chapel, we did all sorts of games and such to get them to remember the memory verse and then had a skit to teach them the first chapter of Jonah. After their first chapel, we sent my cabin to archery or rock climbing and I went off to seining. At seining, we caught a stingray and it got stuck in our net by its barb. The barb on stingrays are sharp, jagged little things that are covered in stinging cells so we had to back all the kids away from the net and then had to figure out how to get the little guy out of the net. The first thing we tried was to pull the barb out the net but that proved not to work and it would have been very dangerous for us because of potential to get stung. We ended up sending one of the counselors to get a pair of scissors so we could cut off the barb while 2 off us kept throwing water on the stingray to keep him alive. We finally got the barb cut off and set the thing free but it took about 10 minutes for it to revive in the water. In case you’re wondering, stringrays can grow back their barbs so there’s noting to worry about there.

As I’m writing this, I’m becoming increasingly more aware that it’s becoming a book instead of a blog so I’ll try to cut the next parts down as best I can.

The next day, wednesday, was mudpit day so my boss gave me time off while my campers went to that so I could get my ankle X-rayed. It turns out that I did not break any bone but the sprain was very significant. I really didn’t get to see my kids all day, except at night when I finally got back from all that. I shared my testimony with them during quiet time and then let them spend the rest of quiet time reading their bibles. One of my kids gave me a friendship bracelet and said that he wanted me to be able to remember him forever. He was my one camper that wouldn’t stop talking no matter how many times I tried to get him quiet.

The home sick camper I mentioned earlier spent half the day tuesday crying. Every time he wasn’t engaged in an activity, he would just start to cry, so we just took him aside and cheered him up as best we could. The only way to keep him from crying was to keep him talking, so some of the other staff members just kept talking and talking with him. On wednesday, I don’t know what happened, but he quit all that nonsense and decided to have a good time. I don’t think I’ll forget him or any of my campers for that matter.

I hope your days are well.

Christ be glorified,

Adam

It’s been a week since my last post and much has happened. We started off the week with a 2.5 hour game of soccer which ended with me having a sprained ankle and the other team winning by one. After the extremely long game, we went to our new directors house for a cookout and games.

On Wednesday we did a practice day at camp. This was pretty unusual because there were no campers but we learned a great deal about the schedule of events and even how to do things like seining. If you don’t know what seining is, it’s taking a great big net and dragging it through the surf by hand. Usually, we’ll find a bunch of minnows, anchovies, and sticks. But often, we’ll also find a few jellyfish and stingray. For you environmental lovers out there, we take great care to return all the fish we find back to the ocean in good, living condition.

Anyway, training continued as usual on Thursday and we got the night off to rest up for the campers to arrive on Friday. The first session was called Buddy Camp. This is an unusual session because not only is it exceedingly short (2 days) but also campers come with a buddy which is typically a parent or other guardian. These are our youngest campers for the whole summer and we like to let their parents in on what we do here. Often, this allows us to share the gospel with both the camper and the buddy and it develops trust between the buddies and the camp so they can be assured that we will take care of their children when they are old enough to come alone.

So, Buddy Camp started at 9 am Friday with campers and buddies arriving. From there we were off to the races. We had camp orientation, and then our first activity which, for my cabin, was seining. However, I was on rescue boat duty so I spent that portion of the morning out monitoring the sail boats and kayakers. We had a couple boats flip and a few campers fall out into the ocean, but our sailors were on the ball and pulled off all their own rescues. Later, my cabin and I went to archery where I taught them how to shoot and the story of Jonathan warning David that Solomon wanted to kill him. I dressed up in cammo for this activity and went early to it. When my campers arrived one of them said, “Woah, when I saw him in that cammo, I didn’t see him!” That’s probably my favorite quote from the whole session.

Later, I was lifeguarding for our swim/sail session and we ended up with 7 jellyfish sting amongst our campers. Somehow, none of the parents got stung, but we called off swimming because of the stings. Later was dinner and then chapel. After that was bed time and that was the end of day one.

For day 2 I was on rescue boat duty for the morning activity, so I didn’t get to spend time with my campers until after lunch. During siesta one of my campers gave me a note that said he was glad he got my cabin and that he was going to miss me.

The next activity after siesta was rec hall games, but I had to go to staff house to clean it up. We got the place nice and sparkly and then I went and helped my cabin pack up and clean before our final chapel of the session. After chapel, we helped load our buddies and campers up and gave them some Uncrustable PB&J’s for the road.

And that was Session 1, Buddy Camp!

Next on the schedule is 2nd-4th grade and then our second (and final) buddy camp. I hope you join me next sunday!

Christ be glorified,

Adam

During one of the days this week, at the morning chapel, we talked about something called Lectio Divina, or divine reading. This is just a fancy term for meditating on scripture. The process involves reading over a small passage and then focusing on a specific verse, phrase, or word and spending time reflecting and thinking about that phrase. As you meditate, you pray and ask how the Lord would have you apply it to your life and what it means.

While in this chapel session, we read over a short passage in psalm 119 and were asked to pick something that stuck out to us during the reading. I ended up on Psalm 119:119 which reads:

You skim off the wicked of the earth like scum; no wonder I love to obey your laws!

While meditating on this I came across several thoughts. The first was on the process of skimming. The idea while skimming is to remove any nastiness on the surface of an object while leaving the good stuff behind. This can go several ways. One relies on the scripture that teaches about building a house on a rock or on sand. Those who follow Christ, seek to build there foundation on rock and thus are deeper than others. Since they are deeper, it would be more difficult “skim” them away. Another direction is that my heart can be skimmed and sin and guilt can be removed. This is Awesome to think about! God skims away the wickedness from my heart.

Another word I focused on was scum. I didn’t have a lot to go on with this but from what I understand, scum tends to grow. If left unchecked it will cover and destroy whatever it’s on. An easy example is a swimming pool. Scum on a swimming pool must be removed before any one would choose to swim in it but if it’s not removed, it will continue to get worse and worse.

Finally, I spent time focusing on the entirety of the second half of the verse, “No wonder I love to obey your laws!” While meditating on this, the only thing I could think of was when Jesus told his disciples, “If you love me, you will obey my commands.” What a beautiful picture, a man loves to obey the Laws of the Lord, and the Lord recognizes that the man loves him because he obeys those laws.

After all this, we prayed on this and discussed how we would respond to what we had discovered. I wanted to share what I thought about with you so that you could see a process of how “divine reading” works. I hope it helps you in your walk.

Christ be glorified,

Adam

Wow… This is not like anything I’ve ever done before. St. Christopher has such a range of events, activities, and work areas that it’s hard to even comprehend them all. There are 5 work groups: worship, teaching, activities, events, and administrative. These work groups are each focused on particular parts of the camp but the members of the group aren’t limited to doing just that part. For example, I’m on the worship team. I can, and should, spend as much time as possible preparing and getting ready for the worship sets and sessions we will have during camp. However, I will have the opportunity to lead an activity hear or help plan an event there many times during the summer. As of this moment, we are all focusing on our own work groups to ensure that we are prepared for the task at hand because this is quite the undertaking for the summer.

Beyond the work groups, we are being trained in every aspect of camp life. Each of us is being trained to carry out and execute every one of the events so that we might be comfortable doing them if and when we are asked to lead them. Thus far, we’ve been trained to use the rock wall and the low ropes course. We’ve also begun training in sailing, but that was cut short due to uncertainties in the weather (which ended up missing us but still presented significant threat of danger). Every morning we begin with breakfast, then a time for worship, prayer, and the teaching of the Bible. After this, we go through the logistics of camp life such as how registration day works, how to treat the children and parents, where supplies might be found, as well as many more things we have yet to learn.

Along with all this, we have been given time to study and experience God’s word on our own as well as with fellow staff members. We share a 16 bedroom house on the beach (don’t worry, strict rules about where we are and aren’t allowed are enforced), which presents great opportunity for fellowship, friendship, and relationship to occur. Thus far, I’ve heard people being built up, called out, and helped out. The staff team is growing together well and this summer looks to be a spirit filled and led occasion and I praise God with the greatness of his Love. I also thank Him daily for placing me here with all this opportunity to grow and pour out that which I have been given amongst the staff and the campers.

It’s off to church now, I hope you have a wonderful and blessed sunday.

In Christ,

Adam

This of course leads to a very fun, but also very exhausting summer. While we at the camp intend to give these kids a great time kayaking, climbing, playing games, and what not, our greatest goal is to share the gospel with them. We are setting out to raise up a new generation of those faithful to the cross and this is just a phase in the process. My role in this during the summer will likely involve playing drums for the worship team, leading small group bible studies, heading the prayer room, and when possible manning the climbing wall, helping with kayak trips, and almost any other possible activity.

With all that said, something has recently begun to concern me. It’s a long way off but there’s a chance that it could greatly effect the camp this summer. What I’m talking about is the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (recent article HERE). Last night while channel surfing, I came across the weather channel reporting on the directions that the plume is traveling. One of those directions is towards a gulf current that heads into the gulf, around the bottom of florida, and then up the southern atlantic coast of the US. If the oil reaches this current, it will be carried many miles along the current and could possibly end up going as far as virginia up the coast. This greatly concerns me because it will limit the activities that we at the camp will be able to do this summer. Atleast half of what we do involves some use of the ocean and tidal rivers. So, I’m asking that you begin praying for the camp to not lose functionality, and that solutions to the oil spill will be implemented quickly. From what I heard last, they have already stopped the flow, but that doesn’t get rid of what’s already leaked. Please be praying for this.

In Christ,

Adam

ps. Look for updates as this summer rolls by. I will be posting on the activities of the camp, and if necessary, what happens with the oil slick.

You’re probably wondering where I am coming from on this one. It seems pretty weird to start a discussion on fast food but there is a point to it.

Most of us can generally agree that fast food is tasty. It’s got everything necessary for basic tastiness. These are: Fat, lots of of fat; Salt, tasty little bits of rock; sugar, natures delightful energy source; and probably a little bit of crunch, more of a characteristic than an ingredient but essential none the less. Now these four bits of basic tastiness can be achieved with relatively little effort and when combined often exclude one element that we all need.

Nutrition.

However, it’s important to note that for a short time, one can survive on these elements alone and be perfectly happy. I know this from experience. The downside is that personal health starts to diminish quickly. Soon, more nutritious, less convenient, and slower options become necessary. This too is true for faith. More specifically, faith in Jesus.

Often times many of us rely on an hour of church on sunday to get us through the week. We get a little bit of substance and some entertainment, then we go about our lives as if none of it happened. I know this is true for many, because it has been true for me. The sermon on sunday counts as the only bit of nutrition we get per week and then we live the rest of it on thoughts and opinions otherwise known as fast food. Sometimes these things make us feel good, make us sit in awe for a moment, or just seem kinda right, but these tidbits we see are nothing more than fast food. Often time they are disguised as “christian” emails, websites, billboards, or commercials. These all have good intentions, but none will ever sustain you.

This is where the Bible comes into play. On several occasions, the writers of the Bible refer to it as food and on atleast 2 occasions the word is literally eaten (Ezekiel 3:1-3 and Revelation 10:9-11). Both times the word was eaten, it went down sweet. However, on neither occasion was the resulting message well received. On another occasion, Paul speaks about spiritual food. He admonishes the church for needing to be retaught the basic lessons of God’s word and likens this to milk feeding them. This is quite simply unacceptable when mature christians live on a solid diet of righteousness which can be found deeper in God’s word.

Unfortunately for us, this often means that we can’t live off of the fast food sermonettes we are used to. Perhaps it is time we cook up a more nutritious helping of the Bible. Maybe, we should live off of more than just the words we hear for an hour on sunday and discover the words sitting on our shelves at home. Maybe then, we will become strong, healthy christians.

Then again, what’s wrong with a little fast food every now and then?

May Christ be glorified,

Adam