Connect

Class was great last week, we got to try out lots of different ways to immobilize our spines, and I got a 90 on my  quiz. Woo! I was kind of nervous about that quiz though, because the day before was the student ministry's Reach event, which stole several hours that could have been spent studying. However, it was tons of fun playing laser tag and hanging out with the teens (and I also made vocab flashcards so that I could study during the car ride there, which helped a LOT). 

Of course, nothing could compare to this weekend: Winter Camp! Friday morning was spent putting the finishing touches on the camp, and then we welcomed five youth groups and their kids that evening. I was given a schedule of what I was supposed to do, and then I ended up getting even MORE tasks! For example, because I made the PowerPoint slides for the worship songs on my computer, that suddenly meant that I was to run all the visuals for the evening chapels! Oh, and one group's girl leader had to cancel, so I was a program staff by day and a counselor by night. And I also had to teach a skit to the staff because Shawna hoped that I could at least come up with something funny (mission accomplished btw!). 

So Friday evening included a night game, chapel, a campfire with s'mores, and meeting the four girls I'd be spending the night with. Saturday had breakfast, a relay race, teaching a skit to the staff, lunch, sled design and races, zip line, dinner theater, chapel, and broom ball. The skit went over well; it was the one where someone gets bit by a snake, and the ambulance comes but it's too late. Then the audience realizes that it's just a movie because the director (played by me) comes and says how horrible it was. The director then has the actors go over the scene several times in different ways: robot, Spanish, musical, valley girl, etc. Then once the director is satisfied, the cameraman announces there was no film and the skit's over. I've done this skit at camps in the past, but this was I think was especially funny because of how good the rest of the staff was at their parts. Owen played the actor who got bit by a snake, and he was very dramatic at dying. Eli (the only other person in the skit that is also taking the EMT class) announced "the scene is safe" once he got off the ambulance, which made all the other EMT students in the audience (especially Adam) laugh really hard. Broom ball that evening was also a ton of fun. Only seven teams had signed up, so while Eli was making the tournament brackets, I suggested that we could form Team Awesome out of staff members to make for an even eighth team. I grabbed the speaker, Adam and his band, and Owen, and including me that made our team six players. Naturally, between some extremely competitive people on our team and the fact that we were playing against junior highers, we won game after game after game. We didn't even let any of our competitors score a goal! After a tiring day, I had absolutely no problem sleeping, even though the lights in our cabin were left on all night, the girls came in really late after talking with their youth leader, and the sound of a sinking ship was playing on someone's phone at 5 in the morning. (I do think the girls liked me being their counselor though. I brought them a hair dryer to use and gave them a bunch of extra team points for no reason at all.)

Sunday was the last day of camp, so we just had to take care of breakfast. Shawna also asked me to help come up with team prizes. The other day I had seen some small plastic movie trophies in the Batcave, so Kirk and I set to work giving the trophies a makeover. On the base, I put a label that said "Camp Rivercrest Winter 2012 Winner/2nd Place/3rd Place", while Kirk made puzzle piece shapes to cover the film reel that were labeled "Connect", which was the theme of the weekend. After the dining hall was all cleaned, I had absolutely no problem relaxing and doing nothing for the rest of the day. 

Today is our day off, so I'm going to rest some more and hopefully study for EMT class. (I'd like to see if I can beat a score of 90 on this week's test!) I also need be really careful with my back now, since it's been hurting extra for since Friday morning. The problem is, I really don't know what happened. Was it laser tag on Wednesday? Trying on the PASG pants or neck brace on Thursday? Or did I just make it worse during the weekend with broom ball, pushing kids down the zip line, and sleeping on an uncomfortable foam mattress in the lodge? So if you could pray that it will heal and I won't have to go to a chiropractor, that would be great. Other than that, I've just been enjoying camp ministry and everything else that I've been involved with, so praise God!