Hi friends! I am alive!

The past two weeks have pretty much been a blur. Last Monday at 5:00am we loaded up 32 kids and adults and drove to Ridgecrest, NC for youth camp. It was an amazing week that pretty much stressed out every muscle in my body and every wave in my brain, and I am only now beginning to emerge back into the real world.

Camp was an interesting experience this year. Last year, everything was crazy high energy and emotional and big and loud. And this year… wasn’t. I don’t know if it was the staff, or the schedule, or just excessively high expectations, but everything just felt slower and more mellow.

And it was awesome.

At first the kids were struggling with it. They were expecting the insanity we experienced last year. When they got teambuilding instead of competition and parables and discussion instead of naptime disguised as bible study, they didn’t quite know what to do. But by the end of the week I think they were glad for it. All that intense competition and those big emotional nights are gratifying while they’re happening, but they’re hard to translate into everyday life.

We had several kids who were taking their first trip with our group (and some taking their first non-parent trip EVER), and there’s no better way to get to know people than to ride on a crowded van for 12 hours and sleep in a bed with them. The trick now will be figuring out how to walk alongside all these new relationships and support them when real life claws its way back in.

We made it through 99% of the week injury-free… and ended the week with a midnight dash to the emergency room. The night before we left one of our sixth grade boys got his finger slammed in a heavy door. I will spare you the really gross details and instead tell you that he handled it like a champ and we all survived, even those of us who had to drive home the next morning on three hours sleep.

I love camp so much. I love the crazy games and the morning services and the funny videos and the inside jokes and the late night dance parties and the puff painted tshirts and the teambuilding games and the new people and the bonding and the church group time. I can’t think of much better than to have a job where I get paid to do camp. I would do it for free in a heartbeat.