1 Week Down, 11 to Go

Wow. I don’t even remotely know where to begin in order to catch people up on my life right now. We are now in the middle of our second week of Session 1. As anyone who’s spent time at a camp knows, the days feel like months. I feel like we’ve been at for so long already, but we’ve just started. And also, this session’s almost over. It’s slow, but flies by. That’s a weird thing.

It has been an utter surprise. I was prepared for the work, I was excited to have summer staff, I knew that I would be emotionally drained. And as prepared as I was, I was surprised the first week. The first week was great. We had such a diverse group in. We had inner-city Portland and rich suburbs, we had large groups of Hispanic kids, kids from rural Oregon, a group of Capernaum campers (YL’s ministry with disabled kids), Native American kids from the Warm Springs Reservation, and a group of deaf campers. What a crazy group, and something you would only find at camp!

It was so cool to watch these kids throughout the week. It’s such a privilege to work in the Sassy because all the kids come in and you get to learn their names and just see little pieces of their weeks. On the last night they were there, I was out in the Sassy cutting off the line. So basically, I was standing at the back of the line telling kids that we were closed and they couldn’t get in line. I was standing behind the craziest group of girls. It was 5 super preppy white girls and 3 tough looking black girls. I’d met all 8 of them throughout the week and wouldn’t have ever really put them together. But they had ended up in a cabin together here; they all go to the same school. And they had come to the Sassy that night to cash in a prize they had won at the volleyball tourney for a billy sundae. Standing in line behind them, they were talking about how they had all thought it was going to suck to have to share a cabin with each other and how they thought they would never get along. But then they all started talking about how wrong they had been and about how much they had loved getting to know each other. They were all crying and talking about how awesome it was going to be to go back home and just say hi to each other in the halls and at basketball games. I just kept thinking, that seems so simple but it’s something that could literally change their school, create love where there is division.

And there were so many more stories like that. Seeing punk street kids from Central Oregon learning sign language to communicate with the deaf campers. Watching the whole dining hall bust out in silent, hand-waving applause for one of the deaf campers when they won an award. Watching kids that came off the bus looking like they hated the world doing the cha-cha slide and going crazy at the dance. It is incredible what can be done in one week, when kids are surrounded by people that care for them and respect them and show them love. I love my job.

Aside from that awesomeness, my week was also awesome. My summer staff girls (Hannah, Lauren, Lindsey, Jenni, Natalie and Megan) are ridiculously great. They’re all super hard workers and the Sassy is running like clock work. It is hard to get that many people trained and to keep the whole thing flowing smoothly. We’ve had our bumps, but on the whole, I feel like all the prep work paid off and things are running smoothly. One of my summer staff girls is also deaf and that has been a really cool thing. I’ve really enjoyed learning to communicate with her. She’s really wonderful. There’s a couple of the girls that I really click with and feel like I’ve been friends with forever and all the girls are really sweet and a lot of fun. We’re working crazy hours, but they’ve had good attitudes and, most importantly, have been great with campers.

Needless to say, I’ve been an emotional wreck. It feels so good to be a part of this work, I think the Lord has designed me for it. So I’m loving it even when it’s super hard. I’ve also been doing my best to get to everything this week, so I’m trying to stay up right now in order to go to sports center night which is our new Gladiator-style carnival replacement. Same idea as the Carnival, but kicked up a notch. It’s supposedly a lot of fun.

Still don’t know what’s next after this year. Please be praying for a lot of guidance.

That’s life.