Camp is chaos with a direction. Not everyone is geared to work at camp. Some folks need a job description, a number of hours they are expected to work, days off, and the promise of a set bedtime. And then there is camping ministry. One never knows what is going to happen next. All the small business owners out there are nodding their heads. They know exactly what it is like to have responsibility for everything that must be done, no matter the day or hour. For some people, this kind of adventure would drive them crazy. But for some, they simply haven’t tried it yet and don’t realize how amazing it is to watch God work His wonders in the midst of our fears and feelings of inadequacy.

Our summer intern posted a beautiful newsletter article that walked us through her first terrifying and amazing week as a camp counselor. I want to repost that here, because it was so real and honest and fabulous. But I also want to give you guys a sneak peak. I want to take you behind the scenes as Scruffy considered making that phone call that would push our dear Sparks way out of her comfort zone and into a leadership position.

Usually one is a C.I.T. her first year, a Junior counselor her second year, and finally in her third year she is considered for the senior counselor position. But things don’t always work out like this. Sometimes a teen is not ready to be a Senior Counselor when their third year of camp experience rolls around. Sometimes we have too many qualified counselors and an individual must be a Jr. Counselor for another year. Sometimes there are simply not enough applicants and we must choose someone to step up. Once in awhile, we will even ask one of the permanent staff members to counsel. Scruffy, Choco, and I have all taken a cabin for a week when needed.

So, it was the night before camp and all through the house, not a creature was stirring…except for Scruffy who was doing cabin assignments. The number of campers did not match up with the number of counselor applicants. When we are in a pinch with the girl counselors, I usually offer to counsel. This time Scruff was not concerned. “You don’t need to, I have someone in mind.”

When we are short on staff, God always provides someone. Sometimes it is a counselor from years before who is suddenly able to return and help out. Sometimes it is myself or one of the permanent staff members. Sometimes it is a new counselor who is ready to be pushed out of their comfort zone and into a position of authority. Sparks was 17 or 18 years old, demonstrated a solid understanding of the Bible and the Gospel at Staff Training, had a summer of experience at a different camp, and she was from the church of Scruffy’s good friend who highly recommended her. So Scruff didn’t even consider pulling me away from my parenting duties, Sparks was just right for the job.

Easy for us to see her potential, hard for her to feel prepared. It can be so difficult to move forward completely relying on God, but this is exactly where we want our staff to be. This is where God does His very best work.

And so without further ado, here is Sparks’ beautiful testimony.

“Recently I’ve been getting caught up in qualifications. Kind of a weird thing, I know. I’ve been looking for a job, reading about how to get the job I want, and how I need to acquire all these qualifications and skills before I can get the job I want. Honestly, it’s overwhelming. I keep thinking I’m so behind and feeling like I’m pushing against this constant wall of “experience.”
 
I’ve always thought that God’s way is backwards and upside down. He calls the unqualified, the inexperienced, and the weak. I struggle accepting that any of those characteristics could be used to describe me. I struggle accepting them because I don’t want to believe that’s what I am. But like the Bible says, “In my weakness He is stronger.” This brings me to the story of my first week as an unqualified, inexperienced, and weak counselor at Camas Meadows Bible Camp.
  
It was the night before my first week, first year, first everything, when I got a message from Scruffy saying they were short on girl staff and I was going to be a senior counselor that week. That first week. Of the first year. Of the first EVERYTHING. I had no dang clue what I was going to do.
  
That week my co-counselor and I had 8 campers. Neither of us had ever been campers up there so we were total newbs. But despite our under qualified-ness, we lead cabin discussions, created amazing sandcastles and skits, and loved those girls with all our hearts. We honestly didn’t know what else to do! During that week we didn’t know what Whatchamabob was, Morning Jam, or “The Pillow Fight”. Because we were such newbs, we didn’t know the exhaustion that comes with camp, so we would completely expended all our energy every day, all day. We were beyond weak at the end.
  

Three of our girls met Jesus for the first time that week. I still think of their little voices talking to God for the first time and it brings tears to my eyes. I wish I could live in that week always. I wish I could be that weak always. Because we were just winging it, we weren’t relying on God “consciously.” If that makes any sense. We knew we loved Jesus and we knew we wanted these girls to love Jesus too. Each day we didn’t pray “God give us guidance and wisdom as we lead these girls.” We prayed, “Lord, please let us make it to all the activities today and have fun.” In a way we knew God would take care of us. And he did. We didn’t ask everyday to be made humble, we were thrust into humbleness and it was good.
  
I was inexperienced, under qualified, and weak yet God used me. Yet now I feel like I have to be all these things before God can use me, but that’s not true! God will use me wherever he wants, whenever he wants. I just need to admit I’m nothing without him and that it is only through the love of Jesus Christ that I can accomplish anything. I am nothing without God. He is the ultimate qualification, experience, and strength.”

Sparks

The Christmas tree is starting to get dry and crunchy. In our case, several of the branches are already bare. People are packing up their candles and wreaths, their olive-wood nativity sets and all those little Christmas villages with the twinkly lights shining from inside tiny windows. But here at Camas Meadows, the day after Christmas marks the beginning of our main winter camping season.

On the 26th of December Scruffy rushes off to town to shop for groceries. Choco zipps around camp finishing up last minute jobs and starting a fire at the lodge so that everything is warm. Then our summer staff: staff from years distant past, near past, and those who want to be staff in 2015 leave their family celebrations and come up to camp for this unique four-day camp.

When I asked my youngest if he wanted to go over to the camp last night he was feeling tired from a day of sledding and told me: “No…unless Thing is there.”

The Thing was my oldest boy’s camp counselor this summer and is a whole lot of fun. I went over to the camp and walked out of the starlit darkness and into the warm light of the main lodge. Kids in their teens and twenties were hanging out together. Playing board games, eating snacks by the fire, talking on the couch, and hauling their suitcases up the stairs to their bunks. And over by Scruffy was our summer intern, Sparks, discussing Calculus and Trigonometry with none other than The Thing.

The boys rushed over to visit their brother’s counselor and have chili dogs with Scruffy. The Summer Staff Winter Retreat is one of our most enjoyable camps. Our boys love to see everyone they grew close to over the summer and wrestle all the counselors between activities. The Thing is from a two boy family and is not frightened when my three boys rush over and all jump on his head. But this camp is also one of our most important. It brings friends together after months apart. The counselors tell stories about the school year, relive their adventures from the past summer, and rekindle their passion for the Lord and His work. This is a chance for the camp family to reunite, for them to learn and grow in the Lord together.

This year our speaker is Jeffrey Chambers, the youth pastor from Living Stone Church in Chelan. He invited our counselors to BBQ at his house this summer during our staff training and we are excited to continue the fun by having him up to speak this winter.

So, while the day after Christmas is a time of clean-up and putting decorations away for many. At Camas Meadows it is time to start our main winter work. Time to gather our counselors and potential counselors together to learn and grow and to find strength and inspiration for a new year serving the Lord together.

Boo Boo 

There is a part of The Parable of the Talents that always made me uncomfortable. Remember the story? The servant with five talents gained five more and the man with two talents gained two more. Both of them received their master’s approval. But then there was that servant with the single talent who hid it in the ground. All of this was always pretty easy to understand, but it was the fearful, lazy servant’s excuse that gave me pause.

Matthew 25:24–“Then the man who had received the one talent came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed.”

Weird?

Is Jesus saying that God is a pirate? Taking in profit from areas where He did not invest Himself… Now any analogy falls through at some point and for many years I figured that this was just the character of the particular businessman that Jesus put into His parable and not the character of God Himself.

Now I’m not so sure.

Because I’ve lived long enough that I have actually witnessed God doing just what the lazy servant describes.

Did God plant the seeds of death in my life when my dad died back in 1993 or when my step dad died two years ago? Did God plant the seeds of alcoholism and drug addiction into the lives of my family members? Did God plant the seeds of murder, disease, abuse, neglect, hate, anger, poverty, hypocrisy, pride, and every other evil we have all seen running rampant through our world?

No, I don’t think He did.

But I have watched God take in a harvest from these terrible seeds time and time again.

So yes, I believe that God is a pirate. I think that Jesus was saying something accurate about His father when he described the master of this parable as a man who wanted a harvest from every seed, even the ones that he did not sow himself.

Because I have seen the abundant harvest that God has reaped in my own heart from terrible crops that He did not sow. Death and pain, loneliness and hypocrisy, anger and hurt and struggle. And I have watched campers come to stand in the firelight on the last day of camp. So many of them tell a tale that is overflowing with the rampant growth of terrible, terrible seeds, seeds that God did not plant in their lives. But nonetheless, these kids stand by the fire with a stick in hand, telling their story in the starlit woods, because God took a harvest all the same.

So yes, my God is a pirate. And I am so glad He is. God does not wait for beauty and peace to enter my life before taking a harvest of righteousness. He marches into my life and yours, saber in hand and a fierce glower upon his brow, and God dares to bring about His glory, for all to see, right there in the midst of Satan’s darkness.

Now that is the kind of master I want to serve.

Boo Boo

Watching Scruffy scramble around this week trying to get too many things done in too little time reminded me of a story I heard in college about a professor who hated it when his students interrupted his work, only to realize that the interruptions were his work. So why did Scruffy’s busy schedule remind me of this story?

Well, if you work at camp, you work in a constant state of interruption. Scruffy would sit down to write an important e-mail, only to get five more e-mails that he would have to review and consider before replying to the first. Scruffy would sit down to write an article for the newsletter and something for the new e-newsletter that we are trying to get going, but something would break on the generator again and so he would have to run outside and get the power up before the batteries froze. Scruffy would sit down to work on receipts for the camp but someone would stop by to visit the camp and he would need to go out and give a tour. Scruffy would sit down to message someone about the intern program or the rental group schedule for this year and then someone would stop by to talk or call needing to talk or message him on facebook needing to talk.

Yes, Scruff was scrambling to get stuff done this week, but four times in a row I saw him stop when he got a phone call from someone who just needed time from a friend. These were long in-depth phone calls, some of them taking over an hour, but he made the time. Why?

What exactly is ministry?

Is it keeping the batteries in the generator shed from freezing? Is it keeping track of all the money that was spent and reporting that to the treasurer? Is it giving a tour of the camp? Is it taking a call from a friend who is hurting? Is it answering that facebook message from a camper or counselor who needs to talk?

Yes.

Ministry is all of these things.

But most especially, ministry is about people. My husband understands this much better than I do. I tend to look at the to-do list and freak out. Scruff works steadily on the to-do list, but when a person stumbles into his busy schedule, I have seen Scruffy set the schedule aside and tend to the needs of the person over and over again.

So what do we do up here at Camas Meadows that constitutes ministry?

All sorts of stuff. Outside stuff, office stuff, games and schedules, dunk tank and tube hill fun, cooking good food and cleaning up water balloon trash from the parking lot, tracking receipts and making plans for the future, everything. But most of all we want to reach out to people when God sends them into our path. That is our hope and our goal. It is hard to know what to chose, when a thousand things are knocking on your door, needing to be done. But we seek God and do our best and trust that He will finish the work that He started. Everything is ministry when done with a heart for God, but the people, they are sent to us from Him. The workers at Camas, we want to get to the end of our lives and be able to look back and see that we took care of God’s beloved children when He sent them our way.

 Galatians 5:6–“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor circumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

Boo Boo

It’s Snowing!

It is snowing outside as I write.

The powdered sugar flakes sifting down at an angle bring a smile and a sigh of relief. Snow is one of those things we pray for here at camp. Will the snow come early enough in the season or late enough to cover those last few camps? Will we have enough snow to run the tube hill before that first rental group? Will we get a sufficient amount of snow to insulate the ground before we get a long cold stretch or will the pipes freeze again? One more thing we must give to God.

We have been praying for snow and our Lord has graciously answered us with a beautiful storm and chilly drifts to soften and cover the ground. While I am out hunting for that last bicycle that one of the boys was sure he put away in October but I’m certain I saw down by the sports court, I will thank Him. This is just what we needed.

Living at a Bible Camp means living on the edge, on trust and hope. Sometimes the power doesn’t work, sometimes the water inexplicably stops and Scruffy and Choco must run up the hillside to figure out what in the world happened with the well, sometimes the pipes freeze in the winter and that involves a whole lot of digging into frozen ground, sometimes there are forest fires in our area, and sometimes it is so hard to send those campers back to their broken homes that we are left zombified and empty of tears at the end of a summer, but God is so good.

God has been gentle and steady and true. He has been taking care of Camas for 40 years and although there seem to be an awful lot of times that we are forced to trust Him because we are out of options and at a loss, sometimes I think this is exactly where he want us. Trusting in our Heavenly Daddy. It is His camp after all.

The snow makes me smile, because it reminds me that He is there. Yes, there have been years that we had to bust out the paintball gear because the snow came late or melted early. But God understands what we need and is always faithful to bring it. The snow reminds me of His constant care and His love for us, the people of His hands.

Isaiah 50:10b–“Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God.”

Boo Boo 

The weather is foggy and cold. I started wearing gloves and a hat on my morning walk and often the meadow is shrouded in mist as my sister and I clomp along the gravel road, our breath coming out in steamy puffs and our shoulders hunched against the early chill. The color is vibrant on the aspen trees and serviceberry bushes. Brilliant yellows, a few reds, and an odd blushing pink that has a hint or orange. October has been lovely this year, but the campers this week did not come to see the color change or to walk along the misty meadow. They may end up doing so, but only after several solid hours spent gaming.

Yep, CamasCon is here again.

It started out as Scruffy’s dream. Finally made real in 2007, although only 12 people attended. Now we have two gaming retreats every year and they are full of Christian board game enthusiasts from around the state and beyond. Our military friends even arrange their leave so that they can attend. Yes, these guys (and a few gals) love gaming that much. And I understand, although I usually don’t play. My boys have been blessed with some of their Daddy’s analytical nature. When you are always thinking and strategizing and scheming, it is wonderful to find other individuals with whom you can sit down and figure out how to take over the world, all in the course of a 1-11 hour game. Most games last from 3-6 hours, but yes, there are those that can go on and on. My three boys (6, 9, and 10) all enjoy a game or two with Daddy. And this year the older two are able to actually attend as periodic campers, now that they are able to sit down through some of the more substantial strategic adventures. It is an experience that is rare in our fast paced, helter kelter, world. Time with friends, doing what you love.

And this year, VanHelsing is returning as the camp speaker.

One of our favorite camp speakers, VanHelsing usually joins us for Senior High Teen Camp in the summer. VanHelsing has a way of being honest that makes you see your Lord differently and draws you into the kind of bold, blatant relationship with God that is unnerving and lovely all at the same time.

For me, fall is about change. Sending my boys off to a new year of school. Leaves in their golden splendor, frost and fog, and the elk bugling on the meadow. And CamasCon is a part of fall for our family. It is a time to reconnect with friends, to play, to challenge one another, to bend your mind against a worthy opponent and see if you can overcome. But it is also a time to stop and consider God, to challenge yourself and to challenge Him. A time to see who He is and who you are and to consider what that means for your life in the coming year.

CamasCon is not for everyone. Some of us cannot sit still for six hours to save our lives. And strategy gaming is a specialized passion. But for board game geeks like Scruffy and my three sweet boys, CamasCon is a highlight of the year.

Well, I better mosey on over to the camp to sit on the couch with a book. My boys love to game, but they are young and someone has to be watching for that moment when they start bouncing off the walls and must be herded outside. But even with all the sitting, they are ecstatic, for finally, after months of waiting, CamasCon has come!

Boo Boo

So…why camp?

I came across another reason why we do this thing called camping ministry.

Scruffy read an article recently about a Cornell study showing that people get more satisfaction from experiences than from things. Camp is full of experiences. Kids set aside their phones and IPods, their videogames and computers, and they drive into the mountains and come to camp. They toss their sleeping bags onto a rustic wood bunk, and run through the grass in the meadow playing American Eagle. They listen to the sound of crickets and owls at night, they walk the packed dirt road up to Inspiration Point and stare up at the stars, they sing worship songs with a teenager strumming an acoustic guitar, they prank other cabins with bags and bags of popcorn, and they kneel together in prayer on the cold linoleum of their cabin floor.

Camp is something you actually do.

We were made for this. Although this study is a secular one and the researchers were looking for the secret of happiness rather than anything having to do with God, I think they have touched upon a deeper truth.

God did not create us so that we could have a bunch of stuff. He formed us from the dust and gave humanity the breath of life for something bigger than hording.

Ephesians 2:10–“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

God wants us to do stuff, not just to have stuff.

Camp gives kids and adults the chance to do. We sing and we hike, we listen and we laugh, we clean and we toil, we run and we sacrifice and we love. These are the things for which we have been made. Of course these will bring us more joy, it only makes sense.

Boo Boo