It's currently almost one in the morning, and I'm dyeing some of my hair blue, but I never said that I have normal sleeping patterns and all of this is totally irrelevant because I'm going to recount some of my favorite memories of camp. Starting now.
This means I have to dig way, way back into the little chasm in my brain that stores all of my precious memories from the summer in order to remember what happened during the first week that I counseled, which was June 22nd through the 28th.
During week one, I counseled with Danae, whom I had known during the school year, but not super well. However, counseling with her was awesome. We were both pleasantly surprised to find out that we worked well together, despite our many differences, and were effectively able to show the love of Christ to our seven goofy, candy-obsessed, slightly hyper, but precious campers. Danae is very chill, realistic, and by-the-book, while I am a bit more outgoing and weird. She was quite a bit more strict than I was with disciplining our campers, and so good at just telling them the truth. She didn't beat around the bush with telling them what they needed to hear if they were disobeying, or simply needed to hear Biblical truth about a situation. Our campers really loved both of us even though we're polar opposites. They even called Danae "mom"...and then they started to call me "dad" and that was just strange.
I remember one night, we had to take one of our campers out on the porch of the cabin to address some issues that had been coming up during the week. The girl, I'll just say her name was Morgan, had been taunting some of the other girls in the cabin, to the point that it was becoming bullying. One of the other girls had even come to Danae in tears because she thought Morgan hated her. Morgan claimed that she was just joking every time, but Danae and I were able to tell her that the way she acts towards others should reflect God, and we explained this to her. She protested, and claimed over and over again that it was all merely joking. We asked her to tell us a little about her life at home, hoping to find out the root of the problem.
Morgan comes from a very broken family. She is a foster child, and one, if not both of her parents (I can't remember exactly) are in jail. She has three sisters, but all of them are in different foster homes, and she doesn't get to see them a lot. She desperately misses them, worries about her parents, and, while her foster-parents are very kind people who treat her well, she doesn't have a very strong relationship with them.
My heart shattered hearing all of this. There are so many kids who come to camp, and you could never imagine the hurt that has been built up in their hearts. All of the walls that have been built up. They have adorable, smiling faces, and just want to have the most fun week of their lives, away from all the troubles at home and school.
Every Monday night during the summer, the Gospel is presented to all the kids on the Ranch. They get to hear, some for the first time, the fact that Jesus Christ loved them so much that He died for their sins and rose from the dead. They have the opportunity to make the decision to believe in Him, and to change their eternal destiny.
One Monday night during the first week of camp, my camper Margaret decided to believe in Jesus Christ as her Savior, and she was miraculously saved. The reason she got to go camp was because her family listened to a Christian radio station where she lived. The radio station ran a contest for a free week of camp at Word of Life. Margaret entered the contest and won. It was all in God's plan that she could come to the Ranch and hear how she could have eternal life in Jesus Christ.
These stories are only some of the reasons why I know God wants me to do things for Him. He wants to use me to do things that matter eternally.
~grace&peace~
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