A beautiful thing...

Camp is awesome!!! This will definitely be a summer to remember. We have a great group of kids this session. We have a full cabin, 10 of them. Three extra kids makes a big difference, but a good one.

This past Monday we went on our first camp out and guess what we ran into again... Hornets... Short Story...
So, we are hiking to a place called Buck Flats. This is a hike that we have already done several times this session in our tribe. Other tribes have also gone on this hike several times. We have 69 kids that are going on this hike. We are in the first part of the hike, I am about 2/3 of the way in the back of the line. I am walking with a couple of kids as we go up and all of the sudden I hear a kid screaming really loudly up ahead. I take off running ahead to find a kid coming running towards me with hornets attached to him. Even though I am not a fan of stinging things myself, I do my best to get these hornets off the kid. After that, I try to get the kid calmed down, he has been stung several times, but luckily he isn't allergic. A few more kids come up behind us. I have them wait with me until more counselors arrive. Pretty soon a couple of more counselors make it up. We get the medical kid and give the kid some medicine. I then send two counselors ahead to see if they can find the nest. The come back and say that it's all clear. We then decide to walk in one group the rest of the way. We put a couple of counselors in front, the kids in the middle and then I round up the back. We then head up the the rest of the way. We get back into the woods on the trail and it's not but 3min later, the kids in front of me turn around screaming and running, so we run back to where we started. Somehow we got tangled up in the nest again. We re-group, send a couple of counselors ahead to check it out again. This time they found it. Hanging right over the trail in a branch was a hornets nest about the size of 2 basketballs. It was huge and we had made them mad. We created a trail around it and were able to get the kids safely that time through.

The crazy part is that we have all hiked that trail several times this past summer. In fact, the nest is so close to the trail that our heads have passed right by it every time. I guess, unfortunately this time one of the kids ran into it.


This Sunday night I will speaking in front of the whole camp at Vespers. Vespers is like a devotional time in the evening on Sunday right before Council Ring. I will be talking about a passage in the John 21: 1-14. This passage talks about finding Jesus in the most common places. Many campers at camp, including myself when I was a kid at Camp, feel that they feel "closer to Jesus" while at Camp. When we leave camp, we find ourselves wanting to change things in our lives but sometimes we fall short of doing so when we return back home. We sometimes feel that we have this "real life" and camp is different. The truth is that the feelings and the closeness that we experience at camp is something that we can experience at home in our daily lives. At camp, we are constantly surrounded by christian friends that we can talk to and be ourselves around. These kids are surrounded by christian men that they can look up to and talk to when ever they need to. When they go back home, they may not have all of this love and acceptance that they get at camp, but that doesn't mean that God is any less there. As I prepare to speak on Sunday, I ask that you will be in prayer for me that God will allow me to speak his words that night.

There is only 4 weeks left at camp this summer. It is going to go by all too quickly. Please pray that God will allow us to seize every moment with these kids, give us the strength to press on when we get tired and to give us spiritual strength to improve our own lives.