Winter Camp

 

Winter Camp was - as suspected - amazing and ridiculous and contained less sleep in two nights than we ought to have gotten in one. The top picture was our cabin before the girls knew each other, but something about it still manages to completely capture everything that was the wildly mismatched group of twelve girls. 

 

Even before we got on the bus the different groups of kids (two different churches plus two school groups who were only vaguely connected with either youth group) were doing their best to break the ice high school style, which, in this case, meant the largest game of ninja destruction that I have ever seen.

Contrary to tradition, there were no broken down buses or flat tires on the way to camp, and, aside from the one bus taking a short initial detour in the opposite direction intended, everyone got there in one piece and in generally a good mood - although far too tired for how young the night was.

After dressing up in cabin "uniforms," though, and playing a few games (which actually turned out to be the only games of the weekend...) they were significantly more awake and ready for a short concert, a message, and the chance to stay awake getting to know each other until 2:00 in the morning.

Which...wouldn't have been so bad, except that morning Bible study was at 7:00am and basically the entire cabin decided to wake up for it. 6:00 alarm anyone?

My lunch table

After Bible study was breakfast, then worship, a message, cabin time, and lunch. Cabin time was one of those events filled with many tears that seem to occur on Winter Retreats and some ministry trips. Which...is not Jessica's forte. I would much prefer to fix problems and give advice! Lol.

We had split the cabin six and six, so that everyone would have a chance to be heard, and, while not all of my girls were the type to just throw their heart thoughts out there on the table, we listened to the few who had something they wanted to share and then jumped on the opportunity to be a body and minister to each other - in this case by writing notes: prayers, verses, things that the girls heard from God for each other.

Probably not quite what the girls were expecting to do, but, meh, they already know that I'm crazy.

(Random aside, but... I was not the only leader there from my class, which was mucho exciting. I love the fact that some of the same leaders are around from when I was in high school, but it's also really cool to see people come back and pour into a new group of kids who are just young enough to have never been in youth group with us - or to only have been there during our about-to-leave-for-college summer months in the case of the seniors.

The afternoon was free time, which meant hiking a hill that was FAR steeper than it looked from the valley but definitely worth it at the top.

Clearly I did not learn my lesson the first time around, though, because, at 6:30 the next morning, I was awake with three of my cabin girls, the other leader, and a handful of additional crazy folks to hike the hill again. Again, worth it for the view and the people connections, but, seriously, twice within twenty-four hours?

One of my freshman girls told me later that she stopped halfway up the hill and told the sky, "I'm right here God. I'm listening! What do you want!?" as if she might get a pass out of climbing the rest of the trail!

In between the two hikes, though, I taught a breakout session on the Biblical background for social justice, we ate dinner, heard another message, something like a DOZEN kids committed their lives to Christ (!!), we worshiped together - and, oh, I have never seen that many smiles in one room before! Talk about watching kids get happy high off of God and life!

Then, we headed back to our cabins, where all of the girls wanted to hear stories from the THREE new family members in our cabin alone. More tears. Much smiling and bouncing. Much, "What am I going to tell my mom?" Etc.

Then, just to make sure that the night ended on a ridiculous note, we gathered everyone back together for more hyper, high-off-life-ness and a chance to see their leaders preform ridiculous skits. The one pictured above is entitled, "People With Shirts on Their Heads."

Once again, we were up until 2:00 or so in the morning. :D

The last morning (post hike) was clean up, breakfast, picture taking, and some just-our-church wrap up time. By the end of the weekend, these pictures describe our cabin best. New friends or better friends, crazy hyper, and just this side of about to fall over exhausted.

And, my cabin weren't the only ones. My little sister and her friends, just like the rest of the camp, exuded happiness and peace and radiant joy as well. (Which was made more impressive by the fact that the weekend wasn't really aimed at them at all.)

No older brother to the Prodigal Son status here. They were just satisfied to be invited to the party.

Have I mentioned that these kids are awesome?!

We got together and the kids (and leaders) got to share stories from the weekend. Each and every story or thank you was met with a loud - and by that point well practiced - "Welcome to the party!" from the entire group.

Names and stories are personal property that I won't share, but, suffice it to say that I was/am incredibly proud of all of the kids, but a few of them very much in particular.

And then... we stuck all of the newbies in the middle of a giant group hug, in the youth pastor's words, "to awkwardize everyone equally."

Lunch was out on the grass - where the sun had finally come out full force - with just enough time for a couple of large group pictures and for the guys to get out some energy parcouring over anything that they could reach. Luckily, they tend to be less accident prone while doing so than my fourth and fifth graders!

The bus ride home was uneventful (in a good way) and largely consisted of way to many games of catch phrase. One of my words was "Nelson Mandela" - South Africa, fought against apartheid, first black president of South Africa, etc. A sophomore guy looked me straight in the eyes with that "Ooh, I know the answer!" look and blurts out,

"Morgan Freeman!"

Haha! Nope. Not quite. Clearly we need to pay more attention is history class.

Some of our new family members (who all happen to go to school together)!

Definitely a worthwhile use of a weekend!