Back-to-Church, Dia de Independencia, and Rosh Hashanah

There were three holidays over the past weekend, and many Americans probably didn't even notice it. So, I'm going to write this blog post in sections according to the holidays.

Dia de Independencia (Mexican Independence Day): We have lots of beans, taco shells, tortillas, and shredded cheese, but not much other food. Most meals are Mexican. So, I guess I technically celebrated Dia de Independencia since I ate nachos that day.

Back-to-Church Sunday: This actually WAS a back-to-church experience for me as I have not attended a Sunday service since July. (Ahh, the life of ministry!) It was a nice service, and I got to catch up with some of the teens.

Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year): Before some of you devout Christians roll your eyes, let me ask you the cliche question: What would Jesus do? Yep, he'd probably celebrate Rosh Hashanah. This was my first time, but I didn't celebrate it the way most Jews probably do. After all, I was noshing on nachos! I used this time to thank God for His creation (even if it meant walking up the scary tower alone to watch the sunset), and then reflect and ponder what to do for this "new year". So, my new year's resolution is to "experience" more often.

What a great time to start "experiencing"! Rosh Hashanah ends about the time I land in Nashville for two weeks of experiencing new things! This trip is turning into more and more of a mission trip, but not by intention. During my first two full days there, I'll be attending a conference with the staff of Devozine (a teen devotional magazine I write for) to help them choose themes for their 2014 issues. I will be spending one week with Chelsea, who is president of her schools' BCM (Baptist Collegiate Ministries), so I'm excited to see what this ministry's all about. I guess that's what missional living is all about; every day can be a new ministry.


Speaking of ministry, yes, I'm working in the media department of the Camp Rivercrest ministry. Last Thursday, I was given Adobe Photoshop to work with, which is ah-mazing to have! Here are some of my projects:

For Paintball Sunday- This logo was made using Gimp before I got Photoshop. I'm not very proud of this one. I also made this video for Paintball Sunday and paintball in general, but I didn't take the game footage.

Again, before Photoshop. Fortunately, I had learned a couple more techniques since the paintball project, but Gimp was still holding me back!

My first camp project on Photoshop and my favorite one that I've made yet. This is the title for Winter Camp.

An idea for Pure Heart- I just created it this morning, so who knows what will become of it?

One of Them

After Awanas last night, I came back to camp, spent a little bit of time there, and then Emily came in saying she was going to go to Omaha to hang out with Jeremiah and Shawn. I was invited, but was warned that it was going to be a late night. Obviously it was going to be late since we didn't arrive there until around 10pm! Most of our night was spent making peach pie. Isn't that a random thing to do, especially at a guy's house? It turned out they pretty much knew what they were doing, except Emily and I did butt in a few times! But between that and just chatting about anything and everything in the kitchen, it was about 4am when we were done. Emily and I decided it would be best to stay in Omaha for the night and then go back to camp in the morning.

We got back to camp around 10am, but I was still exhausted! Emily pointed out that I hadn't had a day off this week due to the Labor Day weekend groups, so today sort of turned into that. After taking a morning nap, I had lunch and then gathered my things to go to Fremont. I was still tired, but apparently not too tired because I got this:

Yes, I am now officially one of them. Once I announced this on Facebook, within a matter of seconds, practically everyone in the state of Nebraska "liked" my status. (Okay, maybe only three people as of right now, but that's still a pretty good percentage of the population, right?) Thankfully, the whole process took less than an hour, which is incredible compared to the horror stories I hear about everyone else getting their license. After that ordeal, I swung by to buy some wiper fluid and went home.

While filling up the wiper fluid, I checked on a few other things under the hood. It looks like I'll need engine coolant and an oil change. Good thing I'm fairly free on Saturday when the auto shop is open!

In other news, this evening I added a new page to my blog. Click on "What I Do" above to see what I'm working on and how you can pray for the ministry outreach aspect of it. Tonight, I also participated in a webcast about the new book Live to Give by Austin Gutwein. I have read this and Austin's other book, and it is so inspiring and encouraging to read about a teen who made a world of difference by using basketball fundraisers to build schools and clinics in Zambia. This webcast had some great information on how to start "living to give", and I even won a $10 gift certificate for my participation! All in all, this session was a huge blessing, and you can experience the rerun at https://www.facebook.com/austingutwein?sk=app_293199044121455.

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...

Media, Media, and More Media

As Camp Rivercrest's media coordinator, I am blessed to not have one standard thing to do, but rather I have the opportunity to work on all sorts of different projects. (I've decided that I should stick with the job title "media coordinator", and I don't think anyone will argue with me about that.) For example, here's what I did today:

-Tried to find a really old video camera that recorded on digital cassettes. We have a lot of videos in this format, so we'd like to be able to archive them.

-After not being able to find this camera (although I found a lot of other cool things), I transferred some camp pictures from my computer to an external hard drive. Someone found this HUGE hard drive yesterday while cleaning out the sound booth, so now I have a place to store the pictures and videos when I finally start scanning and uploading them.

-Joined three other people in the editing of a newsletter article.

-Met with Jon to tell him about the social media I created for camp yesterday. You can check it out for yourself!
             Twitter: https://twitter.com/CampRivercrest (There are no followers yet; you can be the first!)
             Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz/camp-rivercrest-retreat-center-fremont-2 (I took a lot of the pictures that are included here. I also wrote the "History" myself!)
            Google+: https://plus.google.com/115989753506356260150/about?gl=us&hl=en (This one isn't complete yet as I don't actually have admin privileges to it yet.)
            During this meeting, we also came up with a camp e-mail address for me so that I can manage this social media and do other things. So now you can e-mail me at media@camprivercrest.org!

-Grabbed a camera that I found this morning while hunting for a video camera, and went outside so I could take a picture of Jon that would be included in the newsletter.

-Added the new picture, new article, and other modifications to the newsletter and sent it to Emily so that she could also review and edit it.

-Changed my e-mail address on our social media accounts so that it would be a work e-mail instead of my personal e-mail.

-Got the mail while Emily was using my computer.

The Fall Newsletter: What much of today's fuss was about

Of course, the day isn't over yet. Tonight, I'm also going to the first Awana meeting of the year. Jeff is the Awana commander at church, and there was a shortage of volunteers this year, so he managed to convince a couple of us at camp to help out.

And oftentimes I do things that aren't related to our media at all. (Or I end up blogging in the middle of the afternoon in an attempt to spark my work creativity! Hmm...) I wash dishes, run activities, and host when retreat groups are here, as well as attend staff meetings and do some cleaning on weekdays. It's a neat experience and, most of the time, I love my job!

Education

School has started in this area. Colleges started on Monday, and public schools started last week on Wednesday. Over the past couple of weeks, we've had a great turnout of visits at Rivercrest from all sorts of schools. I'm considering attending university next term, if I can get a least a little bit of money towards it and establish residency for long enough (I have no proof that I've been living in Nebraska for over a year now, but now that I have a car and will be changing my driver's license soon, that should change). But even though I can't attend school this term, I am by no means stopping education.

-My job is education. Although I'm not called an "intern" anymore, I feel as though I've been learning a lot more so far this year than I did last year. Although I probably have the most experience writing, publishing, and designing at camp, this job is a whole different scenario from what I've done in the past and I continue to learn from it constantly. For example, even though I've been using Microsoft Word for years, I'm still learning all sorts of formatting things to make papers look better. (There's really no need to get different programs for brochures, newsletters, or booklets; Word has the ability to do it all if you know how to use it.) Same thing goes for website design. And I'll soon have to learn about how to transfer old-fashioned photo slides and video tapes to digital material. (An interesting part of my job is that I am somehow the camp historian, since I'll be archiving over 50 years of media. I don't mind since I've enjoyed finding random facts about the camp for the past several months, but I kind of feel unqualified since Eli actually majored in history and doesn't do any history-related work! Then again, Emily majored in English, but I do all the editing. Hmm...) An interesting and unexpected form of on-the-job education is the challenge of support raising. It's a lot more difficult than I expected, but I enrolled in an informal online course from raising-support.com. Their articles are giving me advice on how to write support letters and what to do once I get sponsors. Coincidentally, the course is also helping me with writing and editing for the camp newsletter and elsewhere with my writing.

-I do continuing education for EMS. EMT licenses last for about two years. In order to renew them, you have to show that you have a certain amount of continuing education hours. Jon, Mike, Eli, Jeff and I got some of our continuing education hours yesterday when Dr. J offered us a class right here at camp! (One other person attended the class, and both he and Dr. J liked seeing the camp, so we might have more events like this in the future!) Our class was "Taking Safety to the Streets", which was a lot of practical information that we didn't cover too in-depth in our EMT class. I'll have to take several more classes over the next year and a half in order to renew my license.

-In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn. That last sentence is a cheesy quote from a cheesy song in the movie Tarzan, but it's true. After taking yesterday's class, I have the option to apply to become an instructor for that class. I'm still considering it, since there is an application fee above the cost of the class to do it and I'm not sure who I would be able to teach the information to. But there are other ways to teach. A couple days ago, I found out about a group home for children in crisis situations, right here in Fremont. I've been looking for a place like this in the area for a long time, and now that I have a car, I have the ability to volunteer there! I haven't heard back from the volunteer coordinator, but I really hope I can move forward with helping at the group home with tutoring and mentoring. (And possibly even organizing a day trip to Camp Rivercrest. Aw yeah, networking!) I took Emily to the Solmens last night for dinner (my first drive for recreation), and we ended up staying until after midnight to play games. One game we played was "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" I ended up being the cheat several times for other people, and I answered all my questions correctly without using any of my cheats. (I did, however, have a complete brain fart when asked the million dollar question; everyone else remembered, but, unfortunately, no cheats are allowed for the million dollar questions. FYI: External fertilization of fish is called spawning.) Emily was good at the game as well. (Intellectually, we're pretty similar. You know, those wordsmiths that did really well in high school.) We got to talking, and before we left that night, I think that family just gained two new homeschool teachers.

-I learn on my own. I couldn't stop learning no matter what; it's just too interesting! Whether it's random research, reading books, or attending seminars, I love taking advantage of these opportunities to learn new things. One subject I've been focusing on lately is orphan care. Jenn, who worked here this summer, knows about this and recently sent me lot of materials from a conference she attended with her new job. One thing I've noticed is that so many ministries are focused primarily on international orphan care, but these same needs in America and other first-world nations are ignored more often than not. It might be because society has made the problem invisible, making it politically incorrect to call a child an "orphan" or a home an "orphanage", thus lessening the sting of what's really going on. I've been feeling a little conflicted for the past couple of months, since I want to both continue doing camp work but also have dreams of starting an orphan ministry, but with this new information, I think it would be awesome to one day do camps for foster/crisis children (known as America's "orphans"), fatherless or single-parent children, kids who have experienced abuse, and/or adopted children.

I received my associate's degree before leaving Oregon, and obtained my EMT certification here. Maybe someday I'll get a bachelor's degree (I'm thinking in either Communications or Nonprofit Administration) so that I'll have a piece of paper to prove that I learned things. But until that time, I'll continue to learn more things, many of which couldn't be learned in a classroom.

One Year

It's finally been a full year here at Camp Rivercrest!

What better way to celebrate my anniversary than with lots of work?

On this Friday of last year, we had a group of schools come out (that was my first day of work). You can read about it here.This year, we had schools come out as well. I hosted the Lincoln Christian School. Since those were day groups, we have more groups coming today. I'm going to host a church group (which is the only reason I'm up and working right now).

Other than that, there isn't a whole lot new. I created the camp's fall newsletter, which apparently people are impressed with. I haven't taken my new car out yet since the titling/licensing offices are only open on Mondays and Tuesdays. On Wednesday, I'll be taking some sort of EMS class at camp (I'm not sure exactly what it is) and I'll get certified to train it! And it's only one month until I get to go to Tennessee! This will be my first non-work-related trip in the past year, with the exception of Christmas break, but everyone got that week off so it doesn't count. I'll be visiting a summer coworker, visiting a publishing company I work for, and seeing some sights that I have been wanting to see for years. The only real downside is that I'll be leaving the day before the Sysco Food Show. Oh well! I went there last year, so I'd much rather see Tennessee for the first time!

Well, I just started talking with my group's leader and it sounds like we'll be having a fun and busy weekend. Talk to you later!

Cars, Crashes, and Culture

For the past year, I've always believed that Nebraska had little to no culture. Obviously, the Hispanic and Asian populations here are a lot fewer than in Southern Oregon where I grew up. (However, I will note that there is a significantly higher African American population.) I found it to be kind of crazy when the rest of the summer staff was saying we had a very diverse staff. Out of over forty staff members, there were only two Filipinos, one Chinese, one Mexican, and one half-black. (By the way, all of our few "diverse" staff members were very proud of their races/ethnicities and even made jokes about themselves, so this is by no means meant to insult them or the cultures they represent.) Well, this past weekend made up for all of the culture I had been lacking in for the past year.

Last year, the week before I came to camp, there was a Slavic camp, the biggest camp of all year. It was so big, that even the staff cabins, with current conditions that make them too bad to normally rent out, were completely filled so that there were over 200 overnight guests, but many others came just during the day. For the past year, I've only heard stories of this group, so it was great to finally experience it for myself. The Slavic group isn't one particular church; it's organized by people in Nebraska and they invite Eastern Europeans from all over the country. Walking through the parking lot, I found plates from Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, and many more. This year, there were even several tents set up so that more people could stay overnight. I loved this weekend. I spent most of it in the kitchen, and it was just so interesting to have a different kind of group here, and they were all fun to talk to. During their chapel meetings, I would sometimes sit in my office (the chapel itself was way too full as it was!) and listen to the sermons. I couldn't understand them since it was all in Russian, but you could tell that they were very passionate and enthusiastic. Even though their chapels went late into the night (which usually bugs me since I can hear everything in the chapel while I'm in bed), it was actually very soothing to fall asleep to multilingual worship music.

After that exciting weekend, we all took a much-needed day off. Sunday evening, Emily and I went to Omaha to meet up with Jeremiah and Ryan at Old Chicago, where we had this great Thai pizza. I think Emily and I bugged the boys a little too much by speaking in Eastern European accents. We had heard that accent so much over the weekend that it was almost as natural as our American accent! After eating, we went to Jeremiah's house to watch a couple of the Bourne movies. Emily and I ended up not getting home until 4am, so the next morning was spent in bed.

I almost didn't go out Sunday night because I had found a car on Craigslist. I've been looking for a car for a few weeks now. So far, I only test-drove one and that didn't work out because it was a Saturday and the banks weren't open. (Looking back, I'm glad I didn't buy it because there were several problems, and the deal seemed kind of sketchy, but that may have just been from it being in a part of Omaha that looked like a Mexican market.) However, I ended up going because I couldn't contact the Solmens to take me there. However, they finally got all my text messages and missed calls, so we made plans to see it Monday evening.

Monday afternoon, when we finally were mostly awake, I asked Emily to take me into Fremont so I could get some cash. On the way back to camp, I switched cars and rode with Jeff and Mikayla back into Fremont. I had volunteered to be a patient for his summer class' final EMT exam. I spent that evening suffering from a Black Friday induced heart attack and falling off of a balcony from having my fans drop me while crowd surfing at one of my concerts. Towards the end of the class, we called Mike to come so that we could have a three-victim car crash scenario. In this scenario, I was unconscious and bleeding in several places. This was a really interesting experience for me. I kept my eyes closed most of the time to keep in character, so I was never really sure what was going on. I was bandaged up, placed on a backboard, loaded on the stretcher, put in the back of the ambulance, and then moved to the bench seat. After getting on the ambulance, I opened my eyes, but I still couldn't figure out what was going on since my spine was stabilized. In fact, at one point in time, I had to ask one of the students to take off one of my bandages because it was too tight and making my foot fall asleep! After this, the other two patients were put on the ambulance and we went for a ride. (It was really weird having NO idea where we were going since I could only see the ceiling!) Then, Mike and I left for Omaha so that I could get this:

It's my first car! After a year of living in the middle of nowhere without one, it will be nice to finally have the freedom to get around. It was truly a blessing; very few flaws and at half the price of the other Explorers I was looking at on Craigslist! The owner was very nice and I could tell that she was being honest about the vehicle. I'm really excited to be able to use it, and I hope it will help me get more involved with ministry. I'll be able to volunteer at places, possibly attend Christian conferences and events, meet up with friends, and drive people around. (I even gave a driving lesson at camp today! Haha... I mostly just wanted to see what it was like from the passenger's point of view, but I think he enjoyed getting the opportunity to drive.)

Speaking of today, we had yet another group come in. This one was Grace University Student Leadership. I got to facilitate a group at our challenge and initiatives course (which is one of my favorite things to do) in the morning, and then work at high ropes after lunch. It's kind of nice to have so many groups come in, even though it means fewer days off. And we'll have several more groups come out this weekend! Fun!