like a fire

I am in the second day (first full day) of Southland’s middle school camp at Camp Kulaqua. Camp is always a great place to go with no expectations. In fact, the more expectations you have, the less you will probably enjoy camp. I’m having a lot of fun this year lostly because of my expectations. Mostly, I am just trying to spend time with the teens that came with me (and others) and enjoy being around them.

Eric Ball, the speaker spent some time with the leaders today and challenged us to minister to teens from the inside in. Nothing new really, but his passions for meeting every person at camp and praying for them is contagious. I have found myself following his lead in this. Just walking around with my kids and having a prayer on my mind for them. I find myself talking to them more and finding out about what I can pray for them. Another guy here, Trey Gordon, has really challenged me personally in another way. He is a licensed counselor and though not overtly practicing this, he just has a natural empathy for people. So while I pray, I am thinking to myself, what is it that God is doing in this person’s life? What is it that they are really struggling with and needing? I know that I can’t fix that, so I’m just praying for and with them about those things. It’s been a great two days.

Then there was the blob. If you don’t know what a blob is, then you haven’t had a full camp life. Basically a blob is a big bag of air that can act as a transport into the upper reaches of the atmosphere. One person sits on one end and another jumps on the other making the end result someone flying. I have been a part of the blob fun before. Usually I get some 90lb middle schooler trying to make me bounce. Not today. Today I got the Amy Hersman experience. I screamed like an eight year old girl, flailing my arms like a hyper-active windmill and landed flat on my side in fresh 72 degree spring water. To say that it was a shock, wouldn’t come close.

It reminds me of the old commercial where they take a frying pan and an egg and crack it into the pan burning it into an unedible mini frisbee. Until you done camp like this, you haven’t lived the Southland experience.