My Part of the Conversation

It’s already Tuesday, and I’m still dragging after a week at camp.  I was out at Camp Smiling Acres from last Saturday through Saturday, teaching the bible classes and spending time with the high schoolers.

I’m entering my 4th year in full-time youth ministry, but have spend many many weeks at church camps throughout my life.  I recently counted, and I have been to at least 13 weeks of camps in 7 different locations.  That’s not even including Mission trips or Wilderness Trek.  As a kid, I went to 2 camps in Colorado and several years of Encounter at LCU.  I interned in Texas and counseled at a camp in Oklahoma 2 summers, then interned in Ohio and counseled at a camp in Pennsylvania.  I counseled and helped teach at a camp in Italy one summer, and have been teaching the Bible lessons at Camp Smiling Acres the past 4 summers.  I’ve been on a couple missions trips and one weeks at Wilderness Trek which also have “camp-like” atmospheres.

In all of those places, I’ve seen things done in very different ways.  Encounter is a camp on a college campus, with a lot more freedom and looser schedule.  The camp I work with now plays a lot of organized sports, whereas the camp in Oklahoma didn’t play any.  At our current camp, there is not any scheduled “free” time, whereas in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma there were large chunks of time allotted every afternoon.

Some of the camps had big, nice swimming pools.  Some didn’t.  Some had cabins, one had dorm rooms, one was just a big lodge (near Cripple Creek, Colorado), and another was a hotel we rented out (in Italy).   A couple were on lakes, some in the mountains, one in the plains of Texas.  A couple were surrounded by trees, others seemed to be in the middle of a barren, barren land.

Some had well-known and well established speakers.  Others had me.  Some had okay food, one had really good food (Italy), and one has the absolute most incredible food for a camp in the history of the universe of the world (Camp Smiling Acres- ask ANYBODY- it’s unbelievable the gourmet meals we eat out there!).  Some were facilities rented out by another church group, and others were camps operated by members in the local congregation.

They were all different in many ways.

Yet, I continue to be amazed that despite their differences, the all have had one thing in common- each week has left a spiritual impact on the teens that attended.

It’s amazing how one week away from home, spending time focusing on spiritual things while also having fun and building healthy relationships can make such an impact in someone’s life.  I’m sure many of you reading this can say one of your most profound spiritual moments occurred while at a camp of some kind.  I know it’s true of me (both as a camper and as a counselor).

I think a reason why it is so positive is because there is a healthy balance to life- little to no contact with media, well-balanced meals, daily activity, spiritual development, and positive social contact.

Mostly, though, I think those weeks are powerful because we had them over to God and give Him the opportunity to make an impact.
Every year I have been responsible for teaching, I have sought out God for what HE wanted me to teach that week.  Sometimes He has responded in ways I expected.  Other times, He has responded in ways I definately would not have expected.  Some years it was far in advance.  This year it was very close to the wire.   In fact, one of the days, Wednesday, I felt Him tell me to scrap everything I was planning and do something completely different.  That also happened to be the most powerful night, in my opinion.

The bottom line is that God was speaking and working through camp to reach out to His children.  I’ve seen him do it in many different places, because people who lead those camps are doing so to make a connection for Him.

Which brings me to my point: what if we did that with every week?  What if we sought out a healthy balance in our lifestlyes, and what if we sought out God to use us every day that way, not just that week?  I don’t think we can recreate camp everyday by any means.  You can’t take all that with you.

But, maybe, just maybe, we can take home “camp fever”, seeking God in all our daily activities.

This time of year, my brain stops being able to roll out extra theological stuff, and I’m ready to just not blog at all. You’ve probably noticed I’ve slowed way down. Still, I’m not looking to quit. So I thought today I’d share with you a few programs I’ve found and use on a regular basis that are free and quite useful.

1. Mozilla Firefox. This web browser does it all, and I really like it. Some of it’s add-ons are some of the other freeware I’ll mention. It has tabbed browsers, so it’s not opening up a new window with new pages, but allows you to select tabs to see other windows you want open. Once you try it, you won’t go back (except when you open a page that only runs with Internet Explorer, which happens on rare occasions). I’m sure you’ve heard of this before.
2. Fire FTP- A Firefox add-on that helps manage ftp accounts directly in a Firefox tab. Very convenient.
3. GSpace- If you have a gmail account, this is a must. It’s another Firefox add-on and it allows you to save files to the storage on your gmail account (2.5 gigs). Great for accessing files you use regularly, but don’t want to continuously email them to yourself or put them on a jump drive you have to carry around.
4. SyncToy- This allows you to sync files between multiple folders on the same computer. I have a folder that syncs with my pocket pc, but don’t want to always edit the files in that folder, because they fit better in other categories. For example, I have a business expense file, a spreadsheet with contact information for all the teenagers, camp files I’ve been working on, and a few other things. I don’t want just a jumble of things in that folder. I want those files where they belong so I can find them easier (expense folder, camp folder, etc). I also want both folders to be current. So, I use synctoy to pair up folders and have the pocket pc folder copy the files from their other locations. This program isn’t highly useful to most people, but is great for me.  It’s even put out by Microsoft!
5. Picasa 2- Okay, so I don’t use this much, but it’s got some great features for quick photo editing and sorting. I also made our youth group slideshow with the slideshow feature on this. You don’t have much control, but it puts out pretty good quality.  A great Google product, put out during their quest for world domination.
6. Photo Story 3- I just found this the other day, but will be using it a lot this year. Lots of great tools for making a slideshow, at a super great price (free).  Another one put out by Microsoft.

Anyway, just paying it forward!