Welllll, let's see. What has happened in the past three weeks? Oh yeah. This little thing that I may have mentioned called Snow Camp, or rather, the first three weeks of snow camp.
Man, I had high expectations, but Snow Camp has managed to exceeded them all. I love it so much. I love the unity it creates among all of us students as we support each other in our different works areas, whether we're working the activities outside in the frigid temperatures, or if we're working in the chaotic kitchen, or indoor activities, or if we're counseling. I love being able to work with people I've never really hung out with or worked with before. I love seeing us students, who are, in reality, pretty much just kids ourselves, stepping up and serving God with our whole hearts and taking on responsibilities and being a good example to the campers who are just a few years younger than us. I love it all.
We're essentially just trying to show a fraction of God's love to these campers while they're here for less than two days. And it's all for the glory of God.
Okay, so brief overview of everything's that happened over the past three weeks of Snow Camp:
Week One: A great opening week. I worked in the kitchen preparing very necessary vittles for about 1,000 people when you factor in all of us students, all the BI staff, the campers, and the youth leaders. I also got to work outside on the tubehills, which is pretty much the best thing ever. There were over 400 campers that week, and on Friday night they all heard the Gospel presented in a simple way that gave them a full dose of a necessary truth. Guess what. About 40 of them got saved!! It was SO crazy cool to see God do big things that week, and even though I wasn't counseling, I still got to interact with a lot of the campers while I was working outside and ask them what they thought of the Gospel presentation, and their responses were really encouraging.
Week Two: I'll just start off with the overview that it was A LOT colder this week. I'm talking mid-teens with a wind-chill in the negatives. I heard that it got down to around negative twenty or thirty, but I might be mistaken. However, I managed to survive with minimal physical damage, and I got to counsel during that week which was...weird...-ly awesome. It was weird for me because I've been a camper at various Word of Life camps so many times, and now it's like everything's coming full circle. I get to be in the position of leadership. I can barely take care of myself, but now I have to take care of kids who are just a little bit younger than me. I had two wonderful and supportive co-counselors and nine rambunctious, lively, scarily intelligent campers who loved to burst out into songs from Frozen. They were something else, let me tell you. But it was such a great experience, especially for me since this was my first time counseling. Throughout the whole weekend I just tried to be as energetic as possible because when I stopped being energetic and off-the-wall excited, I would realize how tired I was, and the fatigue would set in, and that wasn't what the campers needed to see. I just had to remind myself that everything I did was to break down the walls in the lives of the campers, and it was all for the glory of God. It didn't matter if one of my campers wanted to do the Polar Plunge, and jump in a pool of icy water...outside...in the 14 degree weather...while it was snowing. All for the campers. All for the glory of God. It didn't matter if I got less than six hours of sleep both nights during the weekend. All for the campers, and all for the glory of God. It didn't matter if I had to freeze my butt off while watching my campers snowmobile around in circles. All for them. All for the glory of God. I learned a lot that weekend, and I can't wait to do it again. All for the campers. All for the glory of God.
Week Three: This past weekend was quite a bit warmer (and by warmer I mean upper thirties. ha.), and it snowed again! However, my team of five other girls and I were once more confined to the kitchen to work. This, however, is quite an awesome job because you get to interact with so many other people who are working in there in different areas. We did get to work outside as well, and as I mentioned before, it's quite a blast. What stood out to me about this past weekend is how much I got to bond with other students who were working, and specifically my team. We got to spend so much time together during the weekend, and while we didn't get to interact with campers as much, there were so many encouraging words exchanged between the six of us, and many adventures were had. I simply cannot wait to experience the rest of Snow Camp, and the rest of the year with them.
So I suppose you can say I'm a huge fan of Snow Camp.
Please be praying that all of us staff will remained encouraged throughout the rest of Snow Camp because we still have a long, frosty five weeks ahead of us. But it's all for the glory of God, so there's nothing I'd rather be doing during my winter of 2014.
~grace&peace~
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