The summer is halfway over. Session 1B has just wrapped up. We only have two more full sessions left and then the 1 week starter camp. It’s hard to believe that things are going by so quickly. This past session we had a great group of kids who were ready to talk and open up. It was awesome to be able to have those one-on- one conversation with kids that young. One kid in particular at camp, had some life changing experiences and did a complete 180 from where he was when he first came to camp.
Last Tuesday, we went on our second camp out for that session. We went to the Catawaba camp site. From there we were able to hike down to the Catawaba falls. This is one of my favorite campsites to go to. It is really a cool place to be. The campsite is situated in a valley, which does mean it gets darker a littler earlier than normal. But after you get to the site, you can hike down to the falls. The falls are about 200ft high. There is a little bit of room to climb on them before it gets too dangerous. The kids had a blast playing in the water and see all that there was to see. I have included a few pictures in this post so you can see how awesome it is.
Unfortunately, the hike back up to the campsite after our visit to the falls was not so successful. We were almost to the campsite, I was in the back of the line, and we had about 15 kids with us. All of the sudden, I hear kids screaming in front of me and they take off running. I look up and see this huge swarm of about 15-20 hornets fly out of the ground. All but two of the kids take off running towards the campsite. Two of them come running back towards me with hornets attached to them, stinging them. As you may already know, I absolutely hate anything that stings, with a passion. So I take off running backwards as well. We finally stop to assess the situation. We get the kids shirt’s off and kill the hornets that were on them. Then we sit there for a bit and let everyone calm down. In the end, we had 4-5 kids that were stung several times. We gave them all Benadryl when we got back and they were fine.
Here’s the coolest part of the hike. The next day we set off to hike back. To say the least, there are a few nervous people as we prepare to hike back up, afraid that we will run into another nest, me included. We actually do run into another nest on the way back…. The kids had all walked over it, I was in the very back, No one got stung though, I had them run and we got away in time. Here’s the cool part though…. As we are hiking back, every single scenario is running through my mind, what if we run into another nest, what if this happens, what if that happens, how we will handle it. I was scared out of my mind to say the least, but I couldn’t show it. The kids couldn’t see how scared I was, that wouldn’t have helped the situation. About 20 min into the hike I realized something, I was trying to do this on my own, I wasn’t asking God for help, I wasn’t asking for his guidance. Right there on the hike up, I prayed and asked God to take all these fears from me. I couldn’t do this on my own; I needed his help and strength. The Jeremy camp song “Trust in You” kept ringing in my head and I thought about the words to that song on the hike up. A few minutes later, all my fears were gone. I felt completely different. It was amazing. God works in many different ways, sometimes he answers prayers directly, and this was one of those times.
For this next session, session 2A, we will have a full cabin of 10 kids. I already know that some of these kids are coming in with heavy burdens on their hearts so I will ask that you keep them in your prayers as they begin camp next week. I would like to leave you with one final thought from a morning watch last session. To be fully known with God means that we have to be willing to admit that “we are nothing but he is everything.” This is something that we were really focusing on in our cabin the past couple of weeks. We all have burdens in our lives. We have to be willing to give all of those up to God, no matter what they are, no matter how difficult it is, we have to give it all up to him, because he is the only one who can give us true peace and rest.
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