Primary Camp 2

I'm home! After 12 weeks of being away, I'm finally back home- with my own bed, my own shower, my own dresser, my own... ok you get it. :) But I need to let you guys know how my last week of camp went! As I mentioned in my last post, I counseled primaries this past week. I only ended up having 3 campers: one was 7  years old and two were 8 years old. It was definitely different than counseling juniors just because I had to help them so much or tell them a thousand times (not really) to do something before they actually did it. I guess I was getting trained to be a mom... :) Thankfully they were too young to realize they could fake being sick, so I didn't have to deal with any of that! I'm kind of glad I only had 3, though, because I was able to have more one-on-one time with each of them, it was much easier to keep up with 3 kids versus 9 or more, and the room was much cleaner than normal! I actually got a 101 for cabin inspection one day, which was a first for me. :) The Lord definitely was continuing to teach me patience, though, especially with my 7 year old. :) I enjoyed the week, though, and I think my campers had a really good time as well. There were a few juniors and one primary at least that saved, so that was a blessing and answer to prayer! The week was kind of hard, too, because all of us wanted to hang out with each other one last time before we had to leave. We were enjoying ourselves, but were all a little sad because we knew that when the campers left, we had to leave too! Saturday was a rough day. :) Thankfully, my flight ended up leaving later than I had thought it was leaving, so I got to stay at camp a little longer and say bye to people instead of having to leave really early! I did manage to take even more pictures than other weeks because I wanted to document everything. :) So...I give you....pictures from the week- one last time! :)/:(

Splash booth game on the first day of camp. The goal was to catch water balloons in pillow cases.

My 3 campers on the ship. L to R: Gauri, Rachel, and Ariana.

Ariana on the bungaline. My campers loved that thing!

It was so hot they decided we should play some water games. This is a game where the first person in line held a huge sponge under water until they said go, then they passed it back to the back of the line to be squeezed out into a bucket. Whichever team's bucket filled up first won. But the campers had to pass the sponge backwards over their head... I held it one time, and it was heavy! Several of the campers would fall backward every time they tried to pass it. :) 

Give you an idea of how heavy it was? :)

My precious campers after devotions :)

During God-and-I-time one morning.

Playing piano for morning chapel. This was during the penny parade.

Ariana riding the horse.

Every Junior/Primary week, each cabin competes against the others to see which has the highest average of verses said by Thursday morning. Whichever one has the highest average gets to go to the island for a cookout lunch. Since I only had 3 campers and 2 of them said all the verses, 4 bonus passages, and started over with the list again, we had a high average! So... my cabin got to go, and the highest Junior cabin went as well. I think my girls had a lot of fun. They enjoyed riding the pontoon boat over there!

The island - taken as we were heading back to camp.

Crazy dish set night! I had a huge bowl and Bethany had...we don't know what that was. :)

What? Only 1? :)

Mr. Ed, the speaker, and the dummy :), whose name I cannot remember. (Henry or Harry or something)

Some of the counselors- 2 had already left and 2 or more were preoccupied at the moment. L to R: Jeremy, Micheal, Mark, Luke, Nathan, Ashley, Bethany, Allison, Julie, and me.

Girl counselors singing "I am coming, Lord"

Doing a one-on-one with Gauri. 

After I emptied my stuff out of the closet, the girls wanted to play in there! They would shut the door and I could hear them giggling inside. :)

Bethany and I

Saturday cleaning of the deluxe rooms. Do we look just a little tired? :)

3 Musketeers!

Well, I want to praise the Lord for a great summer! It was hard to leave, and I'm missing camp and all the people, but it's good to be home. Now I have to switch gears and get ready for school to start back up...still have to finish this chapter of my life! :) Please pray for me this school year! I want to keep up the decisions I made this summer, make good grades :), and be a good testimony and witness for the Lord at school. I'm excited to see what the Lord will do this semester! Thank you all for your prayers for me this summer, and I hope that this blog was a blessing or at least provided some entertainment! :) 

~Emily

Teen Camp 3

This past week was our 3rd and last teen camp. I think there ended up being 80-90 campers. The speakers preached more topical messages about TV and things like that than other weeks, which was nice. Sadly, as a whole, the campers were unresponsive. A few got saved and several made decisions, but after some messages when we were sure there would be a big response, few to none would make a move. I think there was a lot of apathy or inward rebellion in these teens. Throughout the week during cabin cheers in the dining hall, there was just much less enthusiasm than the past teen weeks, and the cheering during games and participation during skit time was less as well. There was much more interaction and problems between the guys and girls, though, as well as craziness in the hallways, etc. It was a different group of teens than before, all right. :) The Lord has continued to work in my heart this week- the first morning service that I was able to go to (see below) was exactly what I needed! It was about thankfulness and how anything besides hell is better than what we deserve. During another service, one of the speakers went through all that Jesus had to endure when on the cross. It was such an eye-opener and challenge that He went through so much for me. I have nothing to complain about... a much needed reminder. :)

As for what I did this week... long story... :) Julie, Charity, and I weren't counseling this week, so on Sunday afternoon, the "dean of girl counselors", Ms. Case, asked us to paint the lake bath houses this week. We started this project back during the first family camp! During the family camp, me, a few counselor girls, and several housekeeping girls all cleaned the place and started putting primer on the walls. But that only lasted about halfway through the week because we all got busy with camp stuff. Ms. Case told us Sunday that the walls didn't actually need primer, so we could just start with the painting. So Monday morning, away we went. :) Now... we had to paint the girls' side and the boy's side, but the guys' only bathroom during the day (unless they go all the way back to their cabins) is the bath house. So we could only work in there during girls' lakefront, when they guys aren't allowed to be down there. Monday morning, we didn't go the the morning service and we started painting. We actually got a fair amount done! Then in the afternoon, I worked lakefront, and Charity and Julie did some painting in the guys' bath house. That night, one of the op staff guys told us that the walls were dripping, there was paint on the floor on the guys' side, and we needed to clean it up. Well, we were in for a big shock! The floors were covered in paint because we had accidentally flipped the drop cloths so that the wet side was on the floor. Then, the guys had taken showers before we painted, so the room was so humid that the paint just ran and the walls were drying with drips. FIASCO!! We cleaned it up. Tuesday morning, we were continuing to paint the girls' side when Mr. Scott came in and told us that a professional painter was coming Friday, and that we should stop painting and deep clean both sides. Ok? :) So until Friday, during every morning service, lakefront, and pretty much any other free time we had, we were cleaning the bath house... which included sanding the walls and benches, scrubbing the floors, cleaning under the sinks, getting spiders off the walls (and believe me, there were a lot of them-alive!), cleaning the toilets, sinks, and showers, and...last but certainly not the least of all our jobs...getting the tape from like 5 WEEKS AGO off the floor. This was not painting tape. It was masking tape! We spent literally like 2 days getting all the tape off the floor. And the tape near the bathroom stalls and showers was moldy because it had gotten wet so much. It was disgusting! We had gloves on for sure! If I ever see masking tape on the floor again, I will probably pass out. Or scream and run away. :) On Thursday morning, Ms. Case told us that we could go to the morning service, which is the one I was talking about above. By Friday afternoon, we had finally finished cleaning, so Julie and I were able to go into town for a few hours. It was lovely. :)
Needless to say, it's been an adventure-some week. I must say... I'll forever have memories of cleaning the bath house. :)

I managed to take a ton of videos this week, along with a fair amount of pictures :), but I can't put videos on here... :( You can see all the pictures, though!

Clara and Bethany: toilet paper brides :)

Ashley and me

Me and Margaret- who is sort of squatting in this picture!

Ashley, me, and Margaret

Margaret at her full 6 feet and me at my full 5 feet, 3 3/4 inches. :) 

Ashley and Allison...the crazy two-some. :)

Andrea and I (Andrea works in the kitchen)

Bethany making fun of how short I am! She's like 5'10"... all the girls here are so tall! :(

She's slightly squatting and I'm on my tiptoes. (I shouldn't have said anything and you guys would think I'd grown! :))

Oh Hiawatha... :) This is the skit I play piano for. 

During the facebook skit

And this is the infamous moldy tape that we had to scrape up. Ewwww!!!

Just one of the instruments I used to scrape it up with. It was stuck on! I also used some other knives throughout the week. :)

Wow, Abby! :)

Ashley and I matched unintentionally! I didn't even notice until we stood beside each other when the choir was getting ready to sing! 

(Bad lighting) Julie and I- so happy that we were finally done! 

Had to get pictures after the fact. :) The toilet is clean, just so you know. :)

Julie with the orbital sander

Check out the tapeless floor! Fiiiiinally.

All the counselor girls... 2 of them are leaving tomorrow! :( 

(Ms. Case is the lady in the back) 

Mark's cabin got messiest cabin from surprise cabin inspection and had to sing "Old McDonald had a pig" 

And today- 3 men/guys got pies in their faces! Mr. Scott (above) said that whichever guy's cabin said the most verses could throw a pie in his face. Dan got him.

I don't know what the challenges were behind the other guys, but this is Micheal. Nathan also got a pie in his face, but he pretty much ran away as soon as it happened. :) Ashley was also supposed to get one, but she lucked out and the kitchen ran out of whipped cream! 

It's been a fun week! I'm so ready to come home, but I'm sad that we only have a week left... mixed emotions. :( Next week is our final week, and it will be Juniors and Primaries. I am going to be on the red team again, counseling primaries, who will be 6-8 years old. Please pray for me! :) If given the choice, I would've chosen to counsel juniors, which is probably why the Lord decided I should counsel primaries. :) I'm sure it'll be a trying week, but God can provide the strength and wisdom. I'm learning more and more that I can do nothing by myself! Please pray for me, the other counselors, and the campers. I think the campers are supposed to be a little "better" this week, but I'm sure there will be many needs in their lives, as well as many who need to be saved. I'm excited to see what God will do! 

Teen Camp 2

This has been an interesting week. I don't know how the weather was at home or other places, but up here, it was over 100 one or more days and extremely hot and humid! It was pretty miserable... I actually got in the water during lakefront time two days because it was just too hot to sit on the docks. But besides the weather, it was a very good week. :) First... there were many campers saved this week! We were able to see some staff kids saved even! There were some who were saved that we would have never guessed that to be the case, which taught us to be really careful and look for fruits of salvation. We also saw some saved who come from really bad backgrounds and we knew needed to be saved. I know a lot of campers made decisions this week. The Lord has also been teaching me a lot and working in my heart this week- the main thing being that He is the One in control. Even if I have no idea why things go one way and not another (which is also me wanting my way over God's way), He knows exactly why and has a perfect purpose for everything. I've been able to give some things over to Him, and He's already answered prayers and shown me things! 

And ... Jacquelyn came up here this week to work as the nurse! It was fun to see someone from home and get to spend time with her. I was able to stay with her two nights, which means I got to experience A/C and a super comfortable bed! :) The Lord also used her in my life this week, which was really encouraging. 

I don't have a lot of great pictures this week since I wasn't counseling, but I'll show you what I have! :)

Counselor/program staff choir on Sunday night. 

Me at the top of the rope swing. That and boating (dragging canoes out for people) are seriously the hardest jobs at lakefront. And since I can't swim, I get assigned to them a lot! :) Whoever is at the top of the rope swing has to hold the hook things and catch the rope every time someone swings off of the rope and the rope comes back toward me. Only sometimes it doesn't come all the way back, or I can't reach it, so the person in the water has to throw it back to me. :) But the hook is really heavy and so is the rope (especially when it's wet), so I've almost fallen over several times! :) 

Someone coming to a crashing stop at the end of the sky glide as Micheal tries to grab him to keep him from dragging on the ground. Someone else is working the break and tries to stop them before they drag the ground, but it doesn't always work. :) I was working harnesses this day, so I enjoyed watching the different landings and I got to ride it for the 3rd time this summer. :)

Clara, me, and Ashley before the service Friday night.

Me and Ashley

The Op Staff choir singing on Friday night.

The blue team counselors waiting nervously as Mr. Stephen read off the scores for surprise cabin inspection scores. :)

And the red team counselors

Jacquelyn and me

Tizzy and some of her siblings were here this week as well- this is Tizzy, me, Mary, and Jacquelyn

Jacquelyn and Sarah

Look at those faces! :) The guy on the left and the two girls were getting ready to get pies thrown in their faces. :)

Tyler

Ashley

Kaylee

And the three of them. :)

Me and Sarah

Tonight, we ate supper at Mr. Todd's house. Julie and Caris enjoyed sitting on the trampoline (we weren't allowed to jump on it) :)

Some of the staff playing volleyball. I took a ton of pictures trying to get good action shots, but I was only able to get a few good ones. :/ They aren't blog-worthy though. :)  

Camp starts right back up tomorrow afternoon with another teen camp. I'm not counseling, so I'll see what different jobs I can find for myself to do. :) Hopefully I'll be able to get to know the campers and counsel some after the services. This week there were more campers that went forward instead of going back, but every week is different in terms of responsiveness. I'm looking forward to what the Lord's going to do, and I appreciate your prayers!