A Multicultural Weekend

Whew! What a weekend! Labor Day weekend was designed to be a time of rest and of getting off of work. While this may be true for some people, it's never been true for me. Whether it's working in retail or working in camps, Labor Day is often extra-busy for me!

By Friday afternoon, I was the only staff left in the office area since many had gone on vacation. I was going to stay in the office just to answer phones and do some personal paperwork, but after getting only one call in a couple of hours, I decided to just go outside. Mike and Shawna's family showed up because they were having a Back-to-School Bash for their homeschool co-op. I was asked to help with the climbing wall in exchange for free dinner with them. I agreed.

Around the time the homeschoolers were coming to camp, Jenn came to camp as well. She brought with her the youth group from Bridge Church. Jenn is now the volunteer and events coordinator for Abide, which is an inner-city ministry that is part of Bridge. She invited me to hang out with her group for the weekend. I agreed to that too.

So after eating with the homeschool group, I went to the rock wall to belay the homeschoolers. When that was finished, Jenn's group showed up so they could go to the top of the tower, and I went with them. I stayed with that group until they went to bed that night. We had a campfire, made s'mores, worshiped, and played Gaga Ball and Ping Pong alongside the homeschoolers. They were sleeping in tents next to my place, so Jenn was using my bathroom and the other staff used my living room as food and electronics storage, and it was nice to have them around. When the Bridge kids went to bed, I stayed with the remaining homeschool kids playing Gaga Ball until they all went home.

The next morning, after devotions, Jenn and I led the challenge course. Before the course, Jeff had come into camp and talked with me for a bit. He said it was too bad that we didn't get photo releases from Jenn's group, because it would be great to have more diversity of races and culture on our website. I talked with Jenn about it, and we agreed that we would take some pictures now, and then she would get photo releases to me afterward. So, below is the group at the challenge course trying out the trust fall, obstacle course web, and team plank puzzle. Jenn had planned to do the giant swing, but it was down for maintenance, so after lunch we did the rock wall instead. Then Mike joined us so that we would have enough people to run the zip line. I hadn't run the zip line since they added the new launch ramp. (Come to think of it, this was my first time working the zip line since before summer when they replace the old line with a new, tighter line!) It works so much better now, and so of course when the group was done, I had to test it out myself.

The Bridge youth group was spending Saturday night at camp too, but I couldn't spend much more time with them because Iglesia de Dios Ebenezer was coming in. As the name suggests, this was a Spanish church. After preparing for, serving, and cleaning up after their dinner, I went back to the Bridge group as we ate Banana Boats and played around.

The Spanish group wanted breakfast at 7, and the Bridge group had to leave by 7, so Sunday was an early morning. I woke up to say good-bye to the Bridge kids, and then went over to the dining hall to help with breakfast prep. After lunch, I got to run the climbing wall for the third day in a row. (I would describe the blisters that formed on my hands, but they all popped from the continuous use of the climbing rope!) Ryan came out to help run the wall, and he's going to take the EMT class that those of us at camp have taken. That's pretty exciting, and not only will increase the safety awareness and emergency response of the camp, but will also provide a reason for media coverage for both the camp and the community college! Mikayla was also at the wall to help with harnessing, so I decided I would teach her how to belay. (I always end up being the test dummy for new belayers!) Then, since she had never been on the improved zip line, I let her go on that, and we drove around in the golf cart for awhile so she could get some driving practice. (Since breakfast and lunch were so early and dinner was so late, there wasn't anything to do in the kitchen at this time. We did some "work" by getting the mail that I forgot to get on Friday, taking Jeff to catch a toad for the group, and informing Ryan what time dinner was.) Then dinnertime came, followed by a night of trying to get some sleep before the next day. Fortunately, Monday only involved breakfast and lunch.

That evening, I Skyped Chelsea in Tennessee so that we could talk about visiting her in two weeks. This trip will really be a dream come true for me as I have wanted to visit Nashville for a long time now. Thanks to this summer, I made some friends that helped make this dream possible. Shawn loves to travel and he posted an airline deal on Facebook, which is what made the plane tickets affordable. Then I get to stay and travel with Chelsea for most of my time there, which really helped with lodging. In addition to sightseeing and experiencing the culture, I plan on staying in a hostel the last few days and making arrangements to visit the staff of Devozine, which is a magazine I write for. I can't wait for this trip, but while planning for it, I'm still trying to stay focused on the here-and-now with camp work. Improving the social media, attending staff meetings, and doing all the little things that need to be done around camp...