Week 4 – Coming and Going

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!