Known Camp 2012

So this past week has been just AMAZING!!! Camp was beyond words! I really can’t even put words to how great it was! Okay, let me just have my moment of complaints for a second. The food was disgusting, the showers are still to small, the beds are still horrible, and it was unbearably hot! That’s all, I’m done, lol!

I really don’t even know where to start; there is just so much I want to say! I had a really great time with my girls! They just kept me laughing all week long! There were times that I did want to hurt them, but I refrained and lectured them a bit instead. We even got along pretty well with the guys this year too, even though I would have liked to hurt Jac… He thought it was funny messing with me, aka hugging me while soaking wet from epicenter and the pool while I was dry. This may have been partially my fault since I did make a big deal out of it, but it was still mostly his fault! Be careful Jac, I will get you back when you are least expecting it!

Pastor Nathan also stretched me this week. You see, I was in charge of finding students to take the offering every night. The first two nights I used people from our church, and then Wednesday night, Pastor Nathan challenged me to find people I didn’t know to take the offering. I think I looked at him like he was crazy. That was not what I wanted to hear. When I told him that I was not happy with him, he took a rubber band off of his wrist and gave it to me, telling me that was fine as long as when I thought about how I wasn’t happy with him, I snapped myself with it. That night at service after the offering was taken by complete strangers that I found (with a little help from my girls…) Pastor Nathan looked at me and stretched the rubber band on his wrist. My response: I gave him a dirty look and snapped my rubber band… Sorry about that Pastor Nathan, I try to keep my dirty looks under control, but that one slipped ;)

The services were just fantastic! Both Pastor Ryan Christopher and Pastor Andrew Cummings really brought the words and got us fired up for God. I must say that my favorite of the two was Pastor Andrew. He kept us on our toes at every night service as well as keeping us awake! (Except maybe the night they fed us the turkey dinner…) He preached in a way that I have never heard before, as well as scripture I had never heard before.

During the pre-service prayer and altar times God really touched me. There was one night, I think it was Tuesday, that during both pre-service prayer and the altar time I found myself sitting on the floor surrounded in God’s presence. It was like I was in my own bubble with God. The music and distractions faded and there was perfect silence in my head. This was God’s way of telling me that lately I have been a Martha, doing this and that, but not making time for Him. He wants me to be a Mary. He wants me to just sit at his feet and be with Him, just spend time with Him! And to tell you the truth, I think I knew this before camp, but I just kept making excuses. Ever since I started college, I stopped making time for God. I told myself that I was too busy, but I think I was just ignoring God. But, God changed me this week. Since Tuesday night, I have been in perfect peace. There were a few things on my mind that I wasn’t sure about, and he reaffirmed that I am on the right path and that I am where He wants me to be. The turmoil that was in my head and in my heart is now gone and I just have this overwhelming sense of peace like I have never felt before! So, starting tomorrow, I am going to get back to digging into His word and studying what it says!

The other thing that was really cool was the fact that I was on the other side of the picture during the altar time. I got to pray with the students instead of being prayed for. Now this isn’t new to me, I pray for people all the time at church, but there was just something about it that got me really excited! The most exciting night for me was Wednesday, Holy Spirit night! Pastor Andrew called all of the leaders up to stand in a line, and then called any student who wanted to receive the Holy Spirit for the first time to line up in front of us, and any student who already was filled with the Holy Spirit or waned to be refilled with the Holy Spirit to stand behind them. At this point, I literally could not stand still! I just wanted to jump for joy because of all the students who wanted to receive the Holy Spirit. It just made me so excited!

What was my reward for working so hard this past week, you ask? Well, other than the amazing time and memories that I will keep forever, I got to ride home with Pastor Nathan’s Momma instead of in the van full of crazy teenagers! Let me tell you that was so nice! The thing that made it the best was David and Grace. When we left the campgrounds they were singing worship songs! David sang Freedom (you know the one that goes “No more shackles, no more chains”) and Grace sang God’s Not Dead. This just made me smile so big! They are the cutest things ever! And the best part was, we hadn’t even sung these songs at camp, they were all from their memory! I just love them to death!

Last year I ended with this, “Camp can either be the best experience of your life or your worst. It is what you make it. You can choose to make it great and let God do great things in your life, or you can choose to close yourself off from God and just worry about the social aspect of camp.” While this is correct, there was something that Pastor Andrew preached about that is so much better! He said that you can either make camp and the things that God did in your life a memory, something that is frozen in time, or you can make camp a moment, an event that sets your life into motion. So, this year, I am not going to let my experience at camp be just a memory, it is going to be the turning point in my life! The moment where you see everything changed!