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| Ever so sorry I haven't updated/emailed/called anyone in a very long time. Camp is FLYING by this summer at a rate 10 times as fast as I've ever experienced it.
Everything is going really well, but busy. Families are cool, Impact kiddos are (generally) fun, staff is great. This is our last week with first half staff and new friends will be showing up bright and early Saturday morning.
Still excited-slash-nervous about Dallas. It's been cool to see prayers answered though, as at least one family I'm close to every week is from Dallas (usually v. close to my area too) and has invited me over. One of my best camp friends is a grad student at SMU too and he has promised to be real-life friends with me. Yay.
Better run. Tonight was my night off, but tomorrow morning will still come early. Much love to you all... | | |
| Three days in and camp is going great. We've been in a kind of speciality training week (videographers, life guards, wranglers, etc) so I've had lots of time to get my weekly sched figured out, work on bible studies, etc. It's pretty much just been our leadership staff around the Bluffs this week and we've had a good time -- looks like it'll be quite a nice summer.
We've also had more than our share of fun with the name game. My favorite name I've had this year so far is "Kenya Kiss?" Ha Ha. One of my favorite naming buddies will be here tomorrow -- we usually come up with good ones together.
All of our staff arrives tomorrow as Orientation starts. There is so much information to share in such a short amount of time, that sometimes I feel like Orientation is more stressful that regular camp. I'm excited, though, about the changes that a different job will bring this summer. I'll have a lot more opportunities to invest in staff which pumps me up. | | |
| I've debated for quite a while now about whether or not my post-Forge life is worth writing about and I've decided I think it is. So I'll continue to update because I like to, gosh darn it. So welcome to the rest of my life...
I've officially accepted a job at Highland Park Presbyterian Church. They have a terrific youth ministry program and I've been hired as part of their 5th and 6th grade ministry called JAM56 (click here to check it out) They've had one guy running it for the past few years but it has grown to a point that they needed another fulltime person. That'll be me! I'm pretty darn excited about it. It should be lots of relationship building with kids and parents, bible study teaching, program planning, volunteer training -- all the stuff I love.
I'll still be at PC for the summer and head for Dallas once camp's over. The summer's shaping up nicely and looks like it will be lots of (hard) fun. The past few weeks in Baton Rouge have been filled with sleeping, reading, meeting with friends, sleeping, running errands, and sleeping. Quite a nice break. Just a few more days though, I'm back to camp on Monday.
What's that you say? You'd like to send to keep in touch with me even while I'm at camp this summer? Well, ok. You can always leave a message on my phone or better yet, write me a letter @
PC Bluffs
PO Box 9055
Tyler, TX 75711 | | |
| To answer an often asked question, the latest plan is for me to hit Baton Rouge late Saturday night....we'll see how that plan works out though... | | |
|  [one last picture of all the girls taken a few days ago] Our formal graduation ceremony was today. It was a great ceremony -- a beautiful way to end an indescribable year. We choose 2 class representatives to speak and I was chosen to speak for the girls. Perhaps my thoughts, while mostly applicable to only the girls house, will give you a better picture of our year:
I have been given what I think to be the impossible charge of describing our house this year... we had some good times...Imagine with me, if you will midnight cheerleading practices, 6-hour Uno marathons, and countless dance parties.
We spent 100s of hours at using McAllister’s Deli’s free wireless Internet and at least as many dollars at Starbucks. We took a road trip to Waco for a concert and a road trip to Dallas for dinner. We worshipped in field underneath the stars and sang Dave Barnes from here to Atlanta. We adopted, named, and cursed our junk-food demons.
We read US Weekly weekly. We did Slimfast, Weight Watchers, low-cal, sugar-free and gluten-free diets. We re-named whole diseases after each other. On average, we changed “professional dress” outfits 3 times each Tuesday morning. We hit a lot of road kill this year.
Ours was a house of perpetually dirty dishes, unending AC maintenance requests, and more leaks than most houses will ever see . We cried before we went camping, we cried through paintball, some of us even managed to cry every Monday night during accountability. We were a family in every sense of the word – we saw more of each other than we ever thought possible. We shared our clothes, our sleeping bags, our struggles, our jewelry, our germs, our love – indeed our very lives.
In the end, though, we learned that this year had very little to do with ourselves. We learned that a focus on self is sadly disappointing – and ultimately, not at all gratifying. We learned to serve, to love, and to sacrifice. We learned that we are not the focus of our lives – all we are and all we can do and all that we have learned is important only to the degree that we use it to glorify God. There One so much greater, so much better, so much more worthy of praise. We learned that what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as servants for Jesus’ sake. For the God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
So we have put this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We were pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. We will now always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.
So this year we did not lose heart. Though outwardly we may have been wasting away, inwardly we were being renewed day by day. For these light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So as we go out from here -- from this house, and this year, and this community -- we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen; for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
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