Many times I decide to write a blog entry immediately after camp to remember what I was feeling or thinking at the time….so as to try to capture that moment in time.

One is that I’ve seen many of these campers mature into responsible young men and ladies.  I can remember one camper in particular who came in 2009 as a young camper…always seemingly annoying and always getting in trouble.  I have a photo of him being duct taped by the then teenagers to the basketball goal in 2009.  Now in 2016, as a teenager he led a devotional and talked about the struggles he has as a Christian.

Another young man of note was Austin.  It was Austin’s first time at camp.  When I saw him for the first time I saw a very skinny young man.  He looked gaunt.  As the week progressed I found that Austin had gone through two liver transplants.  Austin had faced more struggles than many of these other campers put together.  Austin had not experienced what some of these other campers had experienced.  He swung on the rope at the creek and got inside the bubble ball.  Austin probably should not have done both of these activities, but he was so excited to be at camp he wanted to experience what everyone else there could experience, regardless of his illness.

I shared a cabin with another counselor.  He was very much interested in my church’s ministers and how we grew.  He explained how he went to a seminar at my church about church growth.  He spoke about how the elders explained what made them grow.  It was this quote that resonates with me:  “It was only after we stopped having meeting about the color of the carpet and started having meetings about winning souls…that’s when we started growing.”

I found myself to be less anxious than in past camp years.  The kids in my cabin wrote and performed their own skit with minimal assistance from me.  I was less concerned about what others thought of me and more confident that I was needed at camp this year.