Category Archives: Big Stuf

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We Are Camp Nine “Brave”

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This was the last morning session and it was a good thing. Getting up at seven in the morning was killing this evening shift girl. Especially being up until midnight or a little later.

The foundation of every virtue is courage which is seriously missing in our culture. It takes a lot of courage to stand up for what is right, or the little guy, or anything out of the norm. How much easier is it to get with the flow and follow the leader than stand out. I guess this goes right along with being real. Often the right thing and the hard thing are the exact same thing. And if we are real honest, the easy thing is so much easier but often leads to not so great results.

Stuart said the way to obtain courage is to love someone deeply and to know you are loved deeply (by God). So the most powerful version of you, is you fully convinced of God’s love. That feeling loved by God has been huge for me! I have taken more risks and had more courage ever since I first experienced it seven years ago. So I am loved and I am braved sometimes. He finished by listing three incredible gifts.

1. We have existence.

2. We have opportunity

3. We are loved.

 

Mole moral~ I really have no idea about the three gifts so next year I better take better notes. Until then, may more courage and love surround us all.

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We Are Camp Nine “Real”

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Stuart started out session five with this statement “Social media, where fools go to feel important.” I found that so interesting and he wasn’t really ripping on social media necessarily. However, how many people define their self-worth by how many likes or comments they get? Although I may not define my self-worth, I am always interested in how many people see my stuff. This blog is a perfect example. It will tell me how many views I have had. Sometimes I remind myself that even if only one person looked at it, it might be just the person that needed to read my crazy stuff that day! The biggest issue with social media is that it allows you to filter your image by showing the best and hiding the rest. Everyone has that one person that they know that spends all of their time doing just that. They project the perfect image and yet most people can see right through it. I will be first to admit that when I am having chaos in my life (and I have had a lot recently) I become quiet. I don’t feel social media is the place to air all of that but I also have no problem putting up the silly side of myself. And as for pictures of me, I have no clue how to Photoshop or edit so what you see is the real (scary) deal!

It is almost impossible to be real if you are living with secrets. Everyone needs to have one person they can tell everything and anything to. I am fortunate to have a person like that in my life. It is also impossible to be real if you feel like you need to be fake to be loved. Say what? If you can’t be who you are but who others think you are supposed to be then it’s difficult to love yourself. It’s also real difficult to like yourself when you don’t think God loves you.

That statement really hit home and caused a flashback to my very first camp, eight camps ago. I never really thought a camp would be better than my first one, but this one blew it out of the water. Anyway, seven years ago for the first time ever I felt that God loved me. It’s hard to explain and most people think I’m crazy but up until that point, I knew in my head people loved me but I couldn’t feel it. Oh it is almost heaven like to be able to feel it. So when Stuart said that I got the goose bumps!

Then he went back to the secrets and he stated people who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. Confessing your sin (secrets) might cost something but concealing it might cost everything. He also reminded us failure is an event, not a character trait!

Mole moral~This session validated me and the fact that I really try to be real all the time. Sometimes my lack of filter can get me in trouble but I’m pretty much my real self all of the time. Watch out world!

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We Are Camp Nine “For”

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Now that the distractions of surgery and the ER have passed and I am back home, I plan to finish up the sessions over the next few days. Session four was Wednesday morning and Stuart Hall was back. He and Jared Herd are tied for my all time favorite speakers. Jared has had a child or two now so I am not sure camp will see him again. However Stuart is older and his kids are almost grown.

Are you known for what you are against or what you are for? Most people are known for what they are against, drinking, drugs, abortion, democrats (just kidding) but not what they are for. Jesus was known for his love and that he came to teach love. This was new to the people of this time because of the religious craziness that was going on back then. They had over 600 crazy laws they attempted to follow to make them worthy in God’s eyes.  Jesus came and said love one another as I have loved you. He did not say your ability to change people’s behavior will prove to the world that you are my disciples or that your ability to follow a ton of rules will prove to the world that you are mine. He said your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples. Then he started talking about circumcision in a room full of teenagers. That was quite comical but his point was that Jesus made circumcision irrelevant because it was just another one of many rules that was now obsolete. Just like sacrificing a perfect animal for forgiveness of sin. The religious fruitcakes of the time asked what the most important commandment was and the answer was simple, love the lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, and the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.

He concluded with love is the most powerful force in the universe and the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. You have to be FOR someone to convince someone. (My notes are lacking here because I cannot remember what the point of that was.) So who will you be FOR? What will you be FOR? Will you be known for what you are against or what you are FOR?

 

Mole moral~I want to be known FOR helping others, being kind and showing love

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We Are Camp Nine ER visit

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It’s been a few years since I’ve taken a kid to the ER at camp so I was due. The worst part about it is my dang anxiety about driving someone else’s car and not having a clue where I’m going. Now last summers cake hunting helped the anxiety a lot and I now have a phone that yells at me where to turn. However Herc was kind enough to drop us off and come back later and get us.

This ER was crazy, they had you sign in by computer and then wait to be called. The kid I was with was really dehydrated. When they brought her to my room she was barely answering questions. I was trying to get her to drink but after about six ounces she almost threw up so I knew it was IV fluid time. After they called us to triage they took her to a room and got an iv in and within a 1/2 a bag she was much more perky and after 2 full bags she was ready to remove her IV and be discharged. Her nurse was really good and I liked her even though I got the lecture that the leaders should be making the kids drink. Apparently every other patient was dehydration and heat exhaustion. Her room leader felt bad and I said you cannot pour water down the kids throats. If the kids are big enough to spend a week away from home they should be big enough to stay hydrated. We got back around 2 in the morning. I missed the late night music session but I already have the camp music on my phone so it was ok.

 

Mole moral~It’s good to check out other ER’s to see how they do things. However, there is no place like Mercy.

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We Are Camp Nine Big Stuf Interns

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IMG_8816This is my very favorite kid and Big Stuf intern. His name is Dan. I met him four years ago on the way to camp. We were on the same bus and it was during the get to know your bus neighbor game. I am not going to lie, I hate that game. It’s where you move seat to seat and talk to every person. It is so hard for me and we actually skipped it this year. However, if we wouldn’t have done that, I would have never met Dan. One of the questions we were to talk about was what is your favorite restaurant. I had written down Steak N Shake (I’m real exciting) and Dan had written Subway. He saw that and high-fived me and said we skinny people can eat fast food. I was like time out, I’m not really skinny and I told him how I had lost forty pounds and how I run like a crazy person. Anyway by the time I switched seats, there was something about him and instantly became my favorite kid besides my girls. After we returned I checked in on him and prayed for him. (Ok stalked him for those who know me well. Haha) I would find out later that Dan had run into Tom (pastor) at chick-fil-A who told him he should do the Oak Bridge internship and he agreed. This past fall/winter when Dan told me he had applied for the Big Stuf internship I was so excited. The opportunity to spend the entire summer at camp leading kids would be so incredible and a life changer. When I found out he was chosen I was thrilled for him. The interns have to pay to do this so most of them fund raise. They do stay in a hotel and are fed for free. However, Dan told me it was camp food all summer so that ended the camp nurse dream. This was the best camp ever. I really never imagined any could out do my first year but this one far surpassed it and I have much more to write about. However I was at the hospital until 2 with a kid who was dehydrated so I must nap for a while. I am so thrilled that Dan was here the entire summer and I am confident it was a life changer for him!

 

Mole moral~Often the things we dread the most, turn out to be life blessings. Without the get to know your bus buddies game I would have never met Dan! He truly is my favorite kid!

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We Are Camp Nine Surgery on the Boardwalk

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After dinner I was walking along and came across a group of people surrounding a girl on a bench who was hysterically crying. I took one look at her foot and saw this sticking out of the bottom of it close to her toes. It was about the size of the top stick in the picture.

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Someone told me it couldn’t be pulled out because there was a barb or something preventing it. It was pretty far under the skin so I had to go into burn unit nurse mode (maybe that’s why I dreamed about the burn unit last night) and take a pair of tweezers and pick the skin apart to reveal the stick. I had gotten about halfway through this endeavor when it was clear we needed a scalpel or a needle or a razor blade. So up comes the official Big Stuf camp nurse with a gadget called splinter out.

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It actually reminded me of the really old blood sugar lancet’s from my really early nursing days. So I stabilized the stick while she finished opening it up so we could pull the stick out. The girl did really well. Her group had a wash cloth so the camp nurse washed it and dried it and put a temporary band-aid on. I told her to take a shower and then come to my room and I would fix her up. Apparently the kids with her convinced her that peroxide on it would feel like acid and it would hurt forever. I told her the peroxide wouldn’t hurt but her foot would probably really bother her to put weight on it. So while she is freaking out about the peroxide I sneak and pour it on and it was over and done with before she even knew it. Then a little Neosporin a 2×2 and some gauze wrap and she was good as new. Someone asked why I didn’t use alcohol. I said now that would have burned like battery acid and she would have come out of her skin. Then they asked if I could look at another kids toe. He was so worked up trying to find injured girls sister he jammed and stubbed his toe and peeled the skin off. He already had cleaned and put Neosporin on in, so I did a burn unit toe wrap! It’s been 15 years since I have done any sort of debridement or burn wrapping but it came right back like it was just yesterday!

Mole moral~Once a burn nurse, always a burn nurse!

 

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We Are Camp Nine Day 2

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I am not going to lie, I am tired! Like really tired! Like I could curl up on the sandy fake wood floor of this room and go to sleep. And maybe not wake up for ten hours. Not to worry, the kids are in small group while I type this. And when they get out, I have a couple already scheduled to stop by and may get a few more surprise visitors. Every time someone knocks on the door I am like who is it now but I am thrilled these kids come to me and trust me. I did see a foot today that has me a little concerned, most likely because I was reading about the bacteria in the gulf of Mexico that can cause necrotizing fasciitis. (aka flesh-eating strep). Google can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing. I always call myself the worse case scenario nurse so whatever the symptom is, I jump to the very worst thing it could be. This is so it doesn’t happen. And this folks is called magical thinking, which my counselor nazi told me does not exist. Anyway, I just went off on a huge tangent so I will try to get back to camp.

At the very first bathroom stop on the way down, I made a really stupid statement. I am not even going to repeat it because I must protect the privacy of others and my own stupid self. Well that comment must have went like straight to God’s ears because ever since then it’s been I will show you Rachel Carty Moehlmann. And he has! It’s so easy to sit and judge others by a few actions you have seen without ever getting to know the person or know their story. However, once the story comes out and God reminds you of how you fell into the same trap not long ago, its embarrassing, annoying and you really hate the God is right and you are wrong! Ok I think I just spoke morse code or something but lets just say I have a huge nice note to write this week at camp. If I tried to speak to this person, I would turn red, get tongue-tied and sound like an idiot. I have a gift for writing (thanks counselor nazi for convincing me) so I might as well use it.

Morning session was we are better together. And because I am so tired I could sleep on the floor, I am going to copy and paste Dianne Prewitt’s post from this morning.

Studies have shown that the #1 ingredient for growth in any area of life isn’t practice or learning or discipline or self-control or any of that – the #1 secret ingredient for growth is SOMEONE ELSE! King Solomon put it this way: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”

I saw that on Facebook and thought it was awesome. I could have said the same thing in about a thousand extra words. The speaker challenged us to think of two people who could be our iron. And these people you have to be totally authentic with and not like the fake self that we often project.

Tonight’s session~we are human. Dianne is in small group so she hasn’t posted anything so I can’t borrow it. I had a really hard time concentrating as my mind was all over the place. But basically bad things are going to happen. God came down in human form so he knows what you experience as he experienced it. He will stand with you and he will win for you. Well he already won for us with defeating death and the enemy.

That is camp day 2. If this makes no sense please refer back to the first four sentences of this blog. I plan to get up early tomorrow as it is a 2 mile walk day. Hopefully, I can squeeze a nap in at some point! Today I was dead to the world when someone knocked on the door, and I remember thinking who is knocking at 2:30 in the morning. It was actually 2:30 in the afternoon and I had a 30 minute sleep like the dead which helped but not enough to fix all this rambling.

Mole moral~I can barely think straight on a normal day, add camp, no sleep and God pounding on me and I am a lost cause!

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We are camp nine

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The theme for Big Stuf this year is WE ARE.

Tonight the talk was we are ready. Ready for what exactly. Well the big answer was are you ready for life and if so how do you know you are ready. The first thing you need to know is your name! Huh? Everybody knows their own name right. Well the truly great people had more than their name. For example, Alexander the Great, William the Conquer, and Ivan the Terrible. So how would you fill in the blank. Mine would look something like this:

Rachel the ___________

high fall risk

One whose parents divorced and her life is ruined (I proved that prediction wrong! I’ve had a fairly great life!)

crazy in a fun way

compassionate

always thinking of others

I could list more but think about how you would fill it in for yourself.

Now here is how the speaker filled in the blank. Rachel is God’s masterpiece. Did anyone come up with that? Seven years of camp later and I’m still so far off. I will never get it right except there really is no right or wrong. I just need to remember this written by Paul (if I was paying attention) for we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us new in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. That’s heavy and hard for me to comprehend. Me a masterpiece? Well maybe a clumsy, crazy, compassionate masterpiece on any given day. So when I believe what God says about me (the masterpiece business), then I’ll be ready for what God has ready for me.

So intense to comprehend this. If we all lived and treated each other like we are indeed God’s masterpieces the world would be a beautiful place. However, I can’t ever see this happening on this side of Heaven so I will wait patiently till I either die or Christ returns.

Mole moral~ Rachel the masterpiece of God!

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Big Stuf Olypmics 2015

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SIMG_8705Yesterday was the Big Stuf Olympics and in true form it was blazing hot. It seems like every year its the hottest day of the summer. That is probably a bit of an exaggeration but just sitting in the shade had me sweating a lot! The Olympics always means camp is fast approaching and it is used as an ice breaker for the kids to get to know each other. This years theme was The Hunger Games. They even had 12 districts. 7,8,9,10,11,12 grade girls and 7,8,9,10,11,12 grade boys. It was very clever and all thought up by the Obterns. They are college aged kids who spend the entire summer working as slaves for the church. Well not really but they do a lot of service work and are the counselors at camp. This year I am riding the pink bus with the tenth grade girls. I told them they all had to win so we would be first on the bus. In true fashion they rocked it and came in first. There first event was to run to the cornucopia in the middle and grab stuff to dress up one member of the team for a fashion parade. The kids were very creative with what they had to work with. I think a lot of the stuff came from the Kid Stuf prop box. Next up was the egg toss and Allyson had hers break all over her hand. Next was a three-legged race and they had to spin around a bat five times and then come back. Now that was hysterical. Some of the kids hopped there and back. Some fell and ended up crawling. The adults were dying. The next event was busting water balloons on one persons head. That was good for cooling off. The final event was running to the table grabbing a paper bag that had unknown food in it and the team had to eat all of it. They had three bags to do. Allyson’s group got donuts, jalapeno’s and saltine crackers. Sierra’s group got Oreo’s, baby food and peanut butter. They said the baby food was disgusting because it was warm from being outside. One group got cottage cheese and the other a gallon of milk. This is why I watch and forget about participating. They ended the day with hitting each other with paint balls in pantyhose. Sierra and Allyson were a painted up mess!

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Church was really good before the Olympics. We sang a new song He Is Jesus As soon as it was over I knew I would be adding it to my running playlist. Later Tom came out and said it’s the theme song of camp this year. I should have known. So I’ve already listened to it three times. I cannot wait until camp. Church was very much like a day at camp so when Herc asked if I was ready to for camp I said yes super fast. This year I will not be out half the day cake hunting and will go to bed at a decent hour. All the buses are full which means if I want to nap, it will be on the floor jammed between the seats!

Mole moral~I may be old but the best part of camp after the sessions will always be the bus ride!

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Herc’s Facebook post about relationships

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Some amazing wisdom in this morning’s session on relationships. Here is a summary…
For guys:
1. Love Jesus (if you cannot follow then you for sure won’t be able to lead)
2. Protect your heart (if you don’t care about your own then you will definitely not care about a girl’s)
3. Get your life in order. (get a job, take your studies seriously, don’t be an underachieving party machine)
4. Say yes to the dress (date with marriage in mind…if you can’t do that then don’t date)

For Girls:
1. Love Jesus
2. Live from your beauty. (you are created in the image of God…you are fearfully and wonderfully made…you are a treasured daughter of the King…when you look in the mirror tell yourself these things)
3. Close the pawn shop. (you are valuable so quit giving cheap discounts)
4. Stock the fridge. (guys gather at homes where the fridge is filled with food…make the guys pursue you…as opposed to a watergirl(boy) who goes around looking for thirsty people)

For All:

1. Am I becoming the right man or woman for someone else?
2. Our hearts should be so hidden in God that a man or woman has to pursue God in order to find you.

Great honesty, openness, and wisdom from camp this morning!

 

I forget anyone can read these so let me tell you just a little about Herc. His real name is Robert but when he was a baby he laid with his arms up and received the nickname Herc from his family. He is second pastor in command after his brother Tom. He is one of the funniest, nicest people I have ever met!

If just one person found this helpful it will be so worth all the technology drama I went through just to paste this onto this blog. In the end it was fairly easy. However, as usual I was trying to do it the hard way. That would be the story of my life!