Tag: Wilds

Thanks again for your many prayers this week. It’s been exciting to see what the Lord does each week as a result of your (and many others’) prayers. “Coming and Going” seems a good way to describe the activity of camp life. Campers are always coming and going each week, and we staff are constantly coming and going from/to various places on the campsite. This week we had a particularly special “coming.” The Vice Chief of Staff of the US Air Force visited the camp this week with 3 of his officers. He was very impressed by what he saw, and he gave the Wilds a commendation coin, which from what I understand is a very coveted recognition in the military. According to Mr. Ken, “it’s quite a hunk of metal.” 😛

I also had another interesting “coming” personally this week. I got a helper! Dr. Sam Horn, who is one of the speakers for CIT brought his son with him. Last week he was normal teen camper, but this past week he helped us out at JBC with various details like opening and closing the game room, setting up chairs for sponsors, etc. Some of you may remember that he had helped with this for one week last year as well. So it was neat to see him again, as well as to see the growth that had taken place in his life.

Of course campers are always coming, and I had another great prayer cabin this week. Three of the campers in it received the Expert Marksman award for saying all of Psalm 139. Another camper trusted Christ as his Savior this week. The counselor told me he prayed one of the neatest “sinner’s prayers” that he had ever heard. Mr. Ed taught through the 10 commandments in his morning chapel messages and gave the campers a neat way to remember them using their fingers. So in his prayer, he prayed through each of the 10 commandments, “I’ve broken this one, this one,” etc. (For numbers 6 and 7, he said “I don’t want to break that one”).

As usual the campers enjoyed Mr. Ed and his ventriloquist dummy, his gospel magic tricks, his powerpoint review games, his other gadgets, and of course, his preaching. I remember hearing Mr. Ed when I was a junior camper, and he hasn’t lost his ability to speak to kids.

Speaking of campers coming, I’m looking forward to those who will be coming down from PA for camp this week. You guys are in for a great week! We’ve got John Goetsch at teen camp, and Mr. Ed again for JBC. We also have Dr. Berg, Mr. Ken, and Scott Ashmore speaking for the CITeers this next two weeks. Can’t wait!

As far as the going is concerned, I got to go and do a new activity yesterday (new for me, anyway) — skeet shooting and handgun shooting. I’ve shot shotguns and rifles at targets before, but never at a moving one. It was quite a lot of fun to blast the clay targets out of the sky. It was even more fun to fire off a full clip of a .40 caliber Walther P99 handgun at a target from 25 yards. 🙂 One of the full time staff members has a farm not far from the camp with a skeet shooting setup, and my boss is quite into guns and brought his own small arsenal along to “play” with after all the skeet shooters left.

And speaking of going, I’d better go and start getting things setup for our required service on the campsite this evening, followed by some extra good food and a good ole-fashioned fireworks show once it gets dark. Thanks again for your prayers!

Admin note: Again, sorry this is a week late. I have been unable to access my website most of this week. Supposedly another site on the server was clogging it. Sigh. The downside of shared hosting…

Thanks again for your prayers this week. We had a great week of camp and the Lord was really at work. This week we had some of the larger church groups that come regularly, so we had a lot of what we call, “professional campers,” or in other words campers who sometimes know the routine better than their counselors! Sometimes that professional camper attitude is accompanied by an insensitivity to God’s working as well, as they’ve “been there, done that, got the team shirt,” but thankfully that was not the case this week.

Perhaps because of all the returning campers, there were a lot of things this week that reminded me how long I’ve worked here. For starters, the theme this year, “Days of Knights” is the same theme as my first year working here, back in 2005. More related to the campers, one of the campers in my prayer cabin has an older sister who was one of my students this semester. Another JBC camper this week has two older brothers, both of whom were in my cabin on different years when I was a counselor. Another camper told me my sister had taught her violin at school this semester. And then to top it all off, in the middle of his message Friday, Big Bob called to me up in the sound booth regarding a detail of one his illustrations that he wasn’t sure about – while giving the illustration! Ok, maybe I have been here a long time. But I love the opportunities the Lord has given me here, and I’d be thrilled to keep serving here as long as He wills.

Kinda related, and I’m not sure if this is on purpose or not, but my assigned prayer partner each week so far has been a first-year counselor without a whole lot of experience. As a result, I’ve been able to share some of the things the Lord has taught me from my experiences which has been a great encouragement to them (and me). That’s just another reason to be thankful for what the Lord has allowed me do. This week, one of the campers in my prayer cabin was very homesick. Understandably, homesickness is not uncommon at JBC, but usually after the first night and the next morning’s activities, the campers are having so much fun they forget about being homesick. However this camper was still a little teary at lunch on Wednesday. However, I was able to help his counselor talk to him about the exciting things they were going to do that day (tubing, water wars, superslide, and of course the amazing, crazy, and hilarious Zing Zang Zap game show 🙂 ) and I continued praying for that camper. On Thursday when I saw him, he was no longer homesick and was having lots of fun!

This weekend, I got to have some fun too. Camp opened up the brand new paintball field for the operational staff, since we aren’t able to play during the week with campers like the counselors are. And even better, they opened it up for FREE! 😀 So I spent about an hour and a half Saturday afternoon shooting and being shot. I have a couple of small welts to show for it, but it was a lot of fun, nonetheless.

Speaking of fun (or more accurately, work, on the sound crew’s part :P), our annual Summer Prayer Partner banquet is coming up in just a few weeks on July 16. I hope to see some of you there. You’ll probably have to look for me behind a sound mixer, but I’ll be there :P.

This week, Tom Farrell is back for round 2 at teen camp, and at JBC we have another favorite speaker, Mr. Ed Dunlop (and of course, his dummy, Andy) 😛 Looking forward to seeing what God has planned for us. Thanks for your prayers.