Junior Camp 1

My first week of counseling EVER is complete! And... I loved it! I am preeettty tired right now, but it was a great week. :) I had 9 lovely girls in my cabin. I can't even count how many times I counted to 9 this week. Probably like every 10 minutes. :) It's hard to keep up with them all! (especially when some walk reeeeaaally slowlyyyy)... The Lord really blessed me with a fairly easy cabin this week. All 9 of the girls gave a pretty clear testimony of salvation, and every one of them gave testimony last night of decisions that they made this week. They were also so sweet. :) It really was so touching to see them excited about telling me something, during prayer- thanking the Lord for the awesomest counselor ever, being sad to leave me today, giving me hugs throughout the week, raising their hands and screaming for "who thinks they have the prettiest counselor?!", and many more things. They were awesome. :) Toward the end of the week, they were getting a little hyper and didn't listen quite so well, so the Lord tested my patience. :) I know the Lord worked in their hearts this week, and we were able to see several campers get assurance of their salvation, and one got saved! But He also worked in my heart this week. The sermons for the campers were also applicable in my life in many ways- Bible reading, obedience- completely and with the right attitude, getting back up when we fall, using the potential that God's given us for His glory, etc. They were all really good sermons. I was assigned to play the piano during the morning sessions every day which was a lot of fun! It was just a really good week, and I really enjoyed counseling. I'm thankful for the many ways the Lord used my campers to teach me things. As I was doing one-on-ones with each of them, I was encouraged to do the same things that I was telling my campers to do, and it was exciting to see how the Lord would give me wisdom in dealing with them. Moral of this loooong story... it was a great week- both fun and spiritually. :)

Pictures!!!! 

Scoring game after the services every night. The goal was to get the ships around the world.

All my campers

One of my campers- Cynthia

All my campers! from L to R: Danielle, Grace, Cynthia, Kiersten, Lauren, Abigail, Lydia, Jenna, and Nicole

On the way to the screen house...temporary stop in the office while the storm died down. We actually still ended up going in the pouring rain, so it was a wet night. :) An adventure for sure!

Jenna was one of my campers (left) and I don't know the other one's name :)

Me, Jenna (L), and Lydia (R) - they saw me do my hair like that one morning and wanted me to do theirs too. :) Sorry for the smudges-my camera was dirty apparently. :(

My girls in line for the scoring game

On spirit day :) My girls had a lot of fun dressing up CrAzIlY! This is Jenna, Danielle, and Cynthia

Big ball volleyball

Skit night... lovely, Tizzy! :)

The speaker for the week with Stan the Man and Mr. Scott with Uncle somebody :) Mr. Scott was really good at it!

Kiersten playing kickball

campers on the hillside

Me and Jenna- I had like 2 people this week tell me that she looked like me! So we took a picture together- what do you think? :)

Lauren, Lydia, Jenna, and Abigail

Last day- Dan holding our team flag waiting for the final scores. The Explorers (not my team) won this week.... :(

Me and all my campers before they left. :(

L to R: Lauren, Nicole, Cynthia, Danielle, Kiersten, Jenna, Me, Abigail, Lydia, and Grace.

resting during clean-up :) Allison, Ashley, and me

Cookout at Mr. Todd's house! Clara, Abby, me, Kaylee, and Caris

Julie and Caris

Bethany and I

This coming week is a teen week, and I'm not counseling, so I'll have to see what all I can come up with to keep myself occupied. :) Pray for the campers!

Family Camp 1

This week was our first week of family camp! I didn't really have specific assignments during the day, but I helped out with activities, babysitting, playing piano occasionally, painting one day ;), etc. During the evening services, I kept infant nursery, which was....interesting. :) We had 3 or 4 babies every night ranging from 2 & 1/2 months to 18 or so months. I was telling someone here that I feel like I got more experience this week with babies than I have at church nursery in 2 years, because I kept it every night! It was fun, though. It was a good week to remind me of my purpose at camp- to serve others.

This next week is going to be a combined family camp and Junior camp. I have no idea how this is working. :) I will be counseling, though, and I'm looking forward to it! Please pray for me that I would have the energy to make it through the week, and that I would have wisdom in dealing with each of my campers. I'm excited to see how the Lord's going to work!

And now.....picture time!

This was on the first day. Bethany and Kaylee were assigned to welcome people, and we ended up filling up a lot of balloons for the kids. It looked very festive in the office. :)

Caris and I

Camp's speedboat! I got to go out on it one day to help with getting tubers on and off the boat, but I haven't actually tubed yet. Maybe I will before the summer ends. ;)

My first time riding a horse! It wasn't terribly exciting, but it was kind of cool to be up on one. :)

My first time on the bungaline! I did two back flips too. :) It was fun!

This is my cabin name...Crown Coronado. Any advice on cheers? :/

Craft time during Junior service in the morning.

Julie painting the pyramid. This is before. Stay tuned for the after picture... :)

FuN cAsTLe!! This is a big bouncy thing for the kids at night. I got in it one night... It was way more fun than playing volleyball, in my opinion. :)

Tizzy is here for another week! It's been nice to see a familiar face. :)

Me playing "She'll be comin' 'round Honolulu" with Mr. Ream leading the campers. :) It's a lot of fun!

Ok, really blurry b/c I couldn't use the flash, but this is during some of the guy counselors' Facebook skit. They're all "liking" something at this point. :) This is Micheal, Dan, Nathan, Luke, and Tyler.

Caris and baby Jorge.

Me and baby Kherington.

Oh the joys of painting the bathhouse... :) 

Family lakefront time....so pretty! 

And here's the after picture. Some other people worked on it besides Julie, but they all did a great job! I think Mr. Todd drew it on there- it's pretty amazing! 

Well, I'm off to start a new week! Please pray for me and all the campers this week. :)

Leadership, Music, and Speech Camp

We have finished the first week of camp! There were about 60-70 campers this week, so it was a pretty small week of camp. I wasn't counseling, but I was able to play in the orchestra and sing in the choir. I also sang in a ladies' ensemble with campers a few times. We had the final concert on Friday night. I didn't have too many jobs to do this week, so I had a lot of free time. I prefer to be doing stuff instead of having nothing to do, so I was a little bored at times :), but Bethany also wasn't counseling this week, so we hung out a lot doing profitable things like swinging, talking, eating, etc. ;) I only went to the evening services this week, but they were very good. The Lord's continuing to work in my life and teach me things. One specific thing that I would appreciate prayer for is patience. Not in regards to people so much, but about circumstances in my life. A lot of the messages recently have been regarding waiting on the Lord, not being impatient, etc. I like to know what's coming ahead or reasons for things, but I'm learning to wait on the Lord and to trust Him to show me in His timing. This next week is Family Camp 1, and so far I'm assigned to work in the infant nursery during the evening services. It should be fun and interesting. :) (for those of you who know me well :)) I've never been to a family camp of any sort before, so it will be cool to see how it works. Please pray that the Lord would work in hearts of campers and in me as well.

Now, it's time for pictures from the week!

This is registration- actually before the big crowd came in, but you get the general idea :)

Spoke tackle 

 

Sorry it's a little off...self-timer + short photographer + camera up high on a rock = a little off :) That gate says Joy. 

And this one says Camp! 

Down by the lake. Excuse the name tag- we have to wear them every day and I forgot about it. :)

Before fun time

Katie (my stand partner in orchestra) and I 

During swim time this week, it was so cold that only 2 girls came, and they went tubing. So Ashley, Bethany, and I went canoeing! Well, I just went along for the ride. :)

Crazy sailors!

Allison and Ashley at the University

Katie and I again

Karis (another counselor) and I before the final concert

Katie and I waiting to go on stage. We didn't get to watch any of the band, because we weren't until after intermission. :(

The back of my hair that Oma did in a relatively short time! She had a line of girls that wanted her to do their hair. :) She's amazing!

The Navigators (my team) won this week! This is our flag being raised by Luke.

Cheering after raising the flag

On the weekends, we girl counselors have to clean our rooms and the deluxe rooms above our hallway. We had a little too much fun cleaning this past Saturday. :)

Somebody likes vaccuuming! :)

Ok, so we just pick sheets from the closet to put on the beds, which already have comforters on them. By the time we got to this room (the last one we did), there were only dark green sheets or weird-patterned sheets left. So I picked the green ones. 

But this was red! It cracked me up how mis-matched this bed ended up. :/  

:)

Sarah Hatchett and I

And...this is part of my room for the next week of family camp. All of the staff girls had to move back onto one hallway yesterday so that the other hallway can be used for nurseries and so forth during camp. If you think this is a lot of stuff, you should see the rest of the room! It actually looks a little better now that some of us put stuff in drawers. :) But there are ELEVEN girls in this room that has 13 beds...agh! It's going to be fun! :)

At the laundromat! Between 6 girls, we had 8 loads of laundry! It took us about 2 and 1/2 hours to do it all. But it was a fun adventure- this was the first time that all of us had actually gone since camp started. :) 

Ashley, Bethany, and I waiting for our 5 dryers to finish. :)

It was a good week! I'm really enjoying my time here, and am so glad that all of the girls are really sweet! Looking forward to more fun! I wish I could put up videos on here, but never fear-I am taking them! Blogger is too slow to upload them, so you'll have to wait until I get back to see them!

 Have a good week!