Tag Archives: God

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We Are Camp Nine “Made New”

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This may be the first time I have actually written about every session. I usually have great intentions to do so but get home and back in the real world and out of sight out of mind. Sad but true. The last session was about being made new through what Jesus did on the cross. All of our sins are forgiven: past, present, and future. Things in the universe break down naturally over time. Just look around, except at me. God doesn’t want to improve who we are but implement a permanent new through Jesus. So because of Jesus you stay new no matter what you do.

This all lead up to what I call the “altar call”. Except at camp, people don’t come down to the front but just stand if they have decided they want to follow Jesus. After that the camp breaks into their small groups and the small group leaders talk to the kids and pray with them that they believe in Jesus and accept him into their heart. This is such a much better way than when I was a kid. Every week the church I went to had an altar call. The congregation would sing Just As I Am which the pastor would say things like “If Jesus is calling you to come down front and you don’t come and you die this week you will go to HELL.” Do you know how scary that was for a kid. I wasn’t sure if Jesus was calling me or not. (I was around the age of 10). What if he was and I didn’t go down and I died? Would I burn in Hell forever? It was scary to get out of your seat and walk down to the front but I finally did it but I have no recollection of my age or the date or even the time of the year. I do remember going to a small room and a lady praying with me. I think somewhere around 30 kids from our church stood up. Earlier in the day 14 of our kids were baptized in the ocean. They were kids who had already accepted Jesus and now were publicly identifying with him. In a couple of weeks we are having a baptism service at church and the kids that were baptized will tell their story and then the church will show the video of their baptism. Baptism services are the best.

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This was the first year I had a Fitbit tracker at camp. I set a record for total steps for the week. I was 10 weeks post surgery and for the first time in two years had two feet that weren’t on fire! I could have done without knowing how little sleep I got. I am an 8-9 hour a day person so an average of 5 did not cut it. Although I did nap and sleep on the bus, most of them did not register as sleep because my heart rate was not low enough to be considering sleeping. My heart rate is around 42-44 when I sleep. The sign of a finely tuned athlete! Hahahaha. This totally explains why it took me three days to recover! I was talking about some of the nurse stuff that happened at camp. I was busier than I realized but I enjoy every moment. I must give a huge shout out to my roommate Lynn who is so helpful. Especially when a kid would wake me up out of a nap and I wasn’t fully awake. She would make suggestions. She was talking about not coming next year because all of her kids are grown but I being selfish said who am I going to room with and who is going to keep me on track. She did get to observe me in full on nurse mode. When the girl was dehydrated and started puking and was not responding to my satisfaction, my spidey senses went in full gear and I started bossing people around to get done what I needed to get done! That usually means I am panicking but not showing it! The kids asked me why I didn’t just start an IV and run fluids in. Well folks, that would be practicing medicine without a licence. The state board of nursing puts a paper out every 3 months and it always lists what nurses get in trouble for. One time a nurse started and IV on another nurse and gave her a bag of fluids. I can’t remember if she was hung over or pregnant but the nurse that did that got her license on probation. So there will be no IV starts at Big Stuf camp!

 

Mole Moral~ It is only 362 more days until Oak Bridge leaves for Big Stuf! I will be honored to go as the nurse again next year! It’s the best busiest, exhausting week of the year! I wouldn’t have it any other way. There is nothing more awesome than watching kids understand there is a God who loves them!

 

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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 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!