This is reposted from Faith Friends and Frappuccinos at http://faithchats.blogspot.com/ where I blog once a week with three other writers.

There have been times that I’ve heard complaints about campfire at Junior camps. Junior campers are not necessarily very deep and spiritual when they share and they often get rather silly.

My oldest boy was a first time camper this week and I was nervous. I just can’t believe that he is this old, I mean it seems like we were just rushing around trying to get his carseat installed and inspected by an official careseat safety fireman so that we could bring him home from the hospital. Ok, so maybe every parent doesn’t refuse to leave the hospital until after their carseat has been seen by the firechief…but this was our baby. I’m sure you understand.

So, this was his first week of camp and despite my nerves, I was able to watch something amazing happen. I got to watch the boy who didn’t want to play paintball, slap on a camo shirt and rush out there like a natural. I got to see the boy who swore to me that he would never ever in his life sit upon a horse, ride off with his cabin behind the wrangler. I got to watch the boy who hates to be onstage get all silly in his cabin’s skit and say a Bible verse from memory in front of a crowd. And my little guy, who begs me not to make him go to church, my little boy was doing the motions to the worship songs and sharing at the campfire. 

Amazing things happen at camp. Sometimes you hear about God for the first time or are rushed away to a safe place where you can just be a kid for one week out of the year. And sometimes you grow up. Sometimes you step away from your brothers and your Mom and Dad and realize that you can stand on your own. Thank you so much to Joker and the rest of our staff this week. Thank you for your blood sweat and tears. For staying up late when they had nightmares and giving your whole heart on the paintball field. He had a marvelous time, just like all of the other kids for whom you give of yourself. Just like all of the other kids that you love.

Boo Boo

Yep, we started out our summer here at Camas Meadows Bible Camp with the Senior High Teen Camp last week. It was an amazing week and difficult to put to words. Skits and pranks and long heart-breaking chapels. The dark mania of nightgames and the sweltering hot of lake day all mixed up with snacktime and singing and playing zombie re-ball in the lodge. In a word…camp.

With my boys a little older now, I was able to attend staff meeting in the mornings. I got to watch the counselors stumble into Choco’s house in a sleep-deprived daze because they had spent all night talking, making cookies, or weeping with their campers. I got to see prayers answered and kids reaching outside of themselves to someone in need. I watched those with no strength left do great and wonderful things because they didn’t need strength, the Lord used them just as they were and He accomplished His work in powerful ways.

I can’t sum it all up. This week was too big. But I can give you just a glimpse. A glimpse of a camper who could not participate because of physical issues. A glimpse of a counselor who sat with her during night games, just talking. A glimpse of the person that the whole camp was looking for during nightgames stumbling into this camper and giving her the points for finding him. They won cabin competitions that day. And then when the counselor stepped back a moment and gave the rest of her girls a chance to serve they stepped up. They looked for their cabin mate during chapels and activities. They sought her out and they welcomed her in and they found creative ways to make sure that she was a part of it all, even though she couldn’t run or hike. Put all of these small moments together with hurting kids and the many people who weep and work to show them love, with the ache of delving deep into God’s word and the joyous agony of honesty and an open heart and you will have a bit of what this week was like. Thank you everyone. You have given of yourself and God has made something beautiful, despite all of our many failures and insufficiencies, I saw His glory this week and it was a lovely sight.

Boo Boo

My oldest boy is going to be a camper for the very first time this year. Since two of our most experienced and awesome guy counselors were spending the week Scruffy had the idea of holding a practice camp for our oldest and any of the kiddos who were too young to be campers.

And so my three boys, my nephews and niece, and our cook’s grandson got the chance to be campers for a day.

They went on a hike to the pond and ate lunch without their parents at a camp table all together. They did archery and built sand castles, sped down the slip-n-slide and played board games. They had a little campfire and read stories with Shinobi and Maximus. Then my 3 little guys hiked all the way up to the Mountain Panther cabin and slept away from home for the very first time. Thank you Shinobi, Maximus, Hatu, and everyone else who helped to make a marvelous day of memories for our little ones.

There comes a time in life when you want something terribly. Something that is difficult. Something that is going to cost you. And you finally want that something badly enough to pay the price. For some people it is a sport, a job, a mission trip, a college they want to attend. But something comes into your life that pushes you over the edge and for the first time ever you bust your hiney off to accomplish that task.

For some kids, that something is to be a camp counselor.

They have been a camper for years. And they have been watching the counselors, admiring them, envying them. Then they turn 15 and the possibility is before them. If only they will fill out an enormous pile of paperwork, convince their parents and pastor and Scruffy that they are responsible, and pay for the privilege to learn the job at Staff Training…then they too can become a camp counselor, in training.

Many of them give up, but some of them will succeed. They will fill out the papers and get the pastoral reference and do the Bible study. Then they arrive at camp to be trained for something that they really really want to do.

It is our privilege to open up the big beautiful world of work and sacrifice and labor and toil to these frightfully young individuals. We teach them how to sweep a floor so that the dirt hidden in the corners actually ends up in the trash. We show them how to plunge a toilet and clean out the dunk tank and how to sneak a urine filled sleeping bag into the wash before a child has a chance to be embarrassed.

We teach them how to set themselves aside for the sake of others and it hurts. Sacrifice is painful, especially that very first time. But then we get to watch them grow. We get to see them singing fast songs with bright-eyed Jr. Campers when all they want to do is collapse on the couch and snore through chapel. We get to see them restocking the bathrooms when they see the empty dispensers, when a week ago they would have just logged a complaint.

Yeah, it isn’t always pleasant to drag a group of new C.I.T.’s (counselors in training) into the real world. But it is also a privilege. Because we get to be the ones who tell them “Yes, you can do this.” And then watch them do something difficult and beautiful and important. And we get to see their eyes when they realize that yes, it was worth it after all.

Philippians 2:3-7–“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves, Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but make himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant…”

Boo Boo

On the Sunday before a summer camp begins Scruffy can be found scowling into his computer trying to make cabin assignments. Sometimes he hands the girl cabins over to me. And while he sits hunched over his screen shuffling campers around on a spreadsheet, I am on the floor with scrap paper and a pen drawing arrows between kids that requested each other as cabin buddies and drawing frowny faces next to girls who requested not to be together. And oh the horror of that moment when we realize that Suzie requested Samantha who requested Brook who requested Audry who’s mother informed us that she cannot be within 20 feet of Brook or the kind of apocalyptic event will occur that makes the great Chicago fire and the San Francisco earthquake look like practice drills.

All this to say that whoever does cabin assignments tries there absolute best to get it just right. However, I remember this one cabin in a summer long past that seemed completely wrong in every way imaginable.

On that Monday afternoon three campers strutted through the doorway fresh from the big city of Seattle. (Ok, I know that in the grander scope of things Seattle isn’t all that spectacular, but to a group of nervous counselors from the woods and orchards of Eastern Washington, Seattle was huge) It was the 90’s and so to prove to the world that they were indeed of the city, these boys had baggy clothes and wore stocking hats in July and emanated an irrepressible coolness that none of us could deny.

And somehow they ended up in Nature Boy’s cabin.

Nature Boy was our neighbor across the meadow. He was smart and tall and handsome, but about the closest thing to a Puritan that I had ever met. He had never been to public school, was a classical pianist, and only endured the syncopated rhythms of camp worship because he felt God’s call to serve more strongly than his concerns for our musical preferences.

It was absolutely the worst match that could have been made.

And then on that first night after chapel, those three city boys sauntered in for cabin discussion. Nature Boy sat them all down, looked them in the eye, and informed them: “You are all going to Hell.”

They gasped in horror. “Why?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll tell you later. Let’s go play night games.” Nature Boy brushed off their protests and got the cabin into their camos before rushing them out the door to play.

Needless to say, this was not the approach to sharing the gospel that we had all learned in Staff Training.

The boys hounded him all week. “Why are we going to Hell? You’ve got to tell us!” When he finally did share the gospel it was clear why they had been so desperate to know. They had no idea who they belonged to. No allegiance to the One who would welcome all His own at the end of their lives. And so they pledged themselves to Him, all three of them. One of those boys even returned to camp a few years later and became the beloved counselor called Doughboy. 

And Boo Boo, what did she learn? I learned once again that the wisdom of God seems like foolishness to man. And you know what? I’m ok with that.

I Corinthians 1:25–“For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”

Boo Boo

CamasCon is about board games. It’s about 35 guys and 2 or 3 gals sitting around in pajama pants and slippers playing Settlers of Catan and Dominion and Battle Star Gallactica until 4:00am without getting up to pee much less going outside to breath any fresh air. But CamasCon is also much much more and thanks to John, one of our regular gamers, we are about to jump past the boards and bits and the fact that Scruffy always plays red and dive into the strange beauty that lies within this odd unorthodox ministry.

Green Meadow is the first word that comes to my mind when I think of CamasCon. I have this game I play called Castle Merchants. It is a light strategy game in which players take on roles of various merchants who are racing around the board trying to sell their wares. It is a race between the players—whoever can make the most gold wins the game. Castle Merchants can be a frantic game at times and players can feel a sense of urgency to get to a castle before another player. In a player’s endeavor to arrive at a high paying castle before another player, he may find himself expending more cards than he desired too. If he is left with a small hand of cards it can handicap him for the rest of the game. Luckily, there is hope though. In the middle of the board there is a place called the green meadow. This is a place where a player can go when he has exhausted his resources to replenish his hand.

We live in a culture that is constantly on the go and we are all under a lot of pressure to race for more gold. In my own life I have felt the toll of this pressure. A few years ago I was working at an exhausting job, which didn’t have a future for me. I worked about seventy hours a week and I never slept. I had just come through a divorce, which I never ever intended to go through. I was struggling to find peace in my life. At this time I was tempted to draw away from my friends. This is around the same time my friends and I started getting into strategy games. I found strategy games to be an incredible escape for me.

In his book Wild at Heart, John Eldredge describes the need we, as men, have to feel a sense of contention, or valiance, or adventure in life. We all have a deep desire to contend against something, which we need to overcome. In our culture this longing can be hard to fulfill; especially if we allow ourselves to get caught up in the daily grind. And our culture wants to deflate us and tell us masculinity is thing of the past.

In my own life I have struggled with my masculinity. I grew up with no dad and three older sisters. Until my junior year in High School most of my closest friends were always girls. I have always been more in touch with my feelings and emotions then most guys I know. It has only been the last decade or so, in which I have started to think more like a man. Some say men and women are the same and they don’t think differently. I do not believe the Bible teaches this. There is a logic a lot of men have to the way they think: a logic, which helps them lead. A lot of men have learned to use their minds when making decisions. For me, this was a skill I used to lack. Being led with one’s heart and emotions can be a dangerous thing and it has gotten me in trouble on a number of occasions. In fact, leading with my heart is one of the reasons I married someone in such an irresponsible fashion, as I did.  

The truth is God wants us to use our minds and our hearts. He wants us to submit them before his throne and to his will. Playing a 3 hour long strategy game is an excellent way to peer into the mind of men. For me, strategy games have been instrumental in helping me think more strategically in life. I tend to be a free spirit. I don’t like to plan things out in advance. But, God is bringing me into a phase of life where he is teaching me to live more strategically. As I am becoming more strategic and learning to plan my days out better; I finding greater success in areas of my life, which have often eluded me.

I believe strategy games can be a way in which men are able to fulfill the role of battle or conquest in their lives, which we so desperately crave. We sit across from each other and we try to surmise a way to conquer that great foe of ours—that one guy who always seems to be a step ahead of us. Some men hunt and some men fish, others play basketball. These are great ways to learn to be wild at heart, but strategy games engage the mind. Strategy games allow me to escape to a distant land, a distant place—where I am the conqueror; where I am the great Lord of the realm. This is all happening in the imagination, whilst at the same time I am trying to see if this might be the day in which I might actually do the impossible and dethrone my friend— Clint.

CamasCon allows us, as men, to have a place we can go to and battle against the mind and prowess of other men.  In an ever increasing feministic culture this can be a powerful thing. But, CamasCon isn’t just a place of battling, where men can be men; it is also a place of rest and rejuvenation. When I first came to CamasCon, I honestly wasn’t looking for a spiritual revival, but that’s what I got. I was looking to unwind, play some games with my friends, and get away for a weekend. I achieved this, but I also achieved so much more. God used CamasCon to awaken me out of my spiritual complacency. I was really challenged by the speaker that year. I found myself spending some much needed time with God. CamasCon, for me, was a place of rejuvenation for my spirit. It was my green meadow where my hand was replenished. It was at CamasCon that God first started speaking to me about my need to go back to school, which I have now done.

The men at CamasCon are high quality guys and it is a deep spiritual encouragement to me to know that in another city and another place there are intelligent men out there who want nothing more than to serve their God. Each time I go to CamasCon I am able to play games with other guys and I learn more and more how they think and this allows me to grow in my own walk as a man. I really like how CamasCon has been set up as a place where we can come play games, have fellowship, but more importantly we can draw into God and remember the calling he has on our lives. It truly is a unique and much needed ministry. I thank God for CamasCon and Daryl and all of the men there. And I continue to look forward to the next time when I will be able to come there, contend, battle, and one day conquer them all. J

Sincerely yours in Christ,

John

I had to give up the other day. Yep, failure thy name is Boo Boo…again. Not only did I wake up late for blogging (6:00am), only to find that my computer was mysteriously missing (Scruff loaned it to a youth pastor over at the camp), but I had nothing for the blog. Nothing for you, no words, no wisdom, not stories, no jokes, just three sugar-stuffed children running around my house who needed to go outside, and no more time to blog. So I posted a sentence to that effect on The Campfire and admitted defeat.

The Lord and I had words over that. I had been telling other people that they should do a camp blog for years and no one took up the torch. “Why don’t you do it?” Scruffy asked me. And I would give him the obvious reasons. I was already blogging six days a week and had no time. Besides, what would I say? What if I started the blog and then ran out of words. Of course He called me then, in the middle of a writer’s conference during prayer and worship. “Write the Blog Boo Boo”. I mean, what do you say to that? So I did and now look at me. Out of time, out of words, letting everyone down. The Lord and I definitely had words that day. But that evening something amazing happened.

I had just wrangled our three boys into bed and was breathing that end of the day sigh of relief when Scruffy came home from camp. He had been talking with the youth pastor who was with that’s week’s rental group who had told him this story.

I can’t believe I’ve never told you this, the youth pastor had said before jumping into his tale. When the church hired me, the current youth leader was walking me through the ministry giving me an idea of everything that she was doing and how they had done it in the past. After we had been through everything, she turned to me and told me that I could change anything that I wanted to about the ministry, except for one thing. I was to take the kids up to this tiny camp in the middle of nowhere called Camas Meadows. Just go at least once, she told me. It’s a special place and they take good care of you. And so I brought our kids up here and we have been coming ever since. We love this place, and you’ve taken good care of us. I mean we came here without an important bit of worship equipment and you just brought me over a laptop to use. Thank you.

I realized a couple of things after Scruffy told me this story. 1) God had things to say and I could trust Him to give me words when I had nothing. 2) Camp is smack in the middle of all sorts of ministry that we don’t even know about. We have been a vital part of this church’s ministry and we didn’t realize. To be the one thing that departing youth pastor didn’t want changed is an incredible honor. 3) Not only did God bring me to tears, giving me some much needed encouragement with this youth pastor’s story. I had also been an accidental encouragement to him. My missing laptop had blessed his camp. And yes, I was upset with my husband for not getting it back on my desk by 6:00am, but despite my ire I had helped someone else out and not even known it.

God is doing things. Things that we never hear about. Things that are little to us and huge to someone else. Dear Lord, help us to do a good job with the little things. For they might not be little at all.

Boo Boo