I did not write as much this camp because I couldn’t stop talking to my roommate Kristin. The one who is just barely older than Emily. I had a great week with her and hoping she not only comes next year but stays with me. She was a great help with removing splinters, cleaning scrapes and applying bandaids. She said but “I’m not a nurse.” I informed her she’s a mom and can handle 90% of the kids issues.

I missed session five which is almost always the accept Jesus into your heart night. We had thirty kids stand up for the first time to accept Jesus. There was more talk about the prodigal son so by missing it I thought I was safe. Wrong answer! It continued through the last two sessions. I did not take notes for seven because after the fire alarm and evacuating the building for almost an hour, my mind was not there. Plus the speaker was so engaging I decided to give full attention.

Meredith is the first girl speaker I ever remember and she started off a little slow but had the audience fully engaged rather quickly. On a side note last year my church implemented a rule that students hand over phones to leaders before session starts and get them back after small group. No one seemed to even complain about it this year.

House Rules of God

1. We have a good Father who meets us exactly where we are. In the story he meets the younger brother right in the mess he is in and accepts him the way he is. He also met the older brother where he was on the straight and narrow path. Home is the place we come and stay when it is safe to be real. So many people don’t even have a place where they feel safe to be their real self.

2. In God’s house we must address our obsession with self. The average American touches their phone two thousand six hundred and seventy times a day. Mine is probably five thousand. The world is curated to feed self. Just think of social media which this obsession is not working. America has dropped out of the top twenty for happy people. It’s almost impossible to be happy or content with what is fed to us on social media. Everyone looks perfect, only posts perfection and happy stories and seem to have everything they want. It’s all false and destructive. God loves us how he made us, not how we compare to everyone else.

3. We need to see one another as brother and sister and label each other this way. Labels matter and I’m going to be real it can be quite fun to label those that are not like me. It makes me feel better about myself but what does it do for the one who is labeled. I should know better as I was teased horribly in middle school. Brother and sister not dork and dork junior. God gives us all a label and it’s quite simple. Child of God.

4. We see ourself as son or daughter. That’s our label.

This was by far the best camp since my very first. Maybe because they had a song that matched the theme. I recommend listening to Homecoming by Bethel music. It is a great song and the entire theme of camp went along with this. My first camp was Broadcast and it also had a song. I just felt this year was intentional from start to finish and once again the best week of the year.

Mole Moral 30 kids accepted Christ plus 27 were baptized in the ocean equals an amazing week.