Mighty to Save

Blogs can be such a great tool. I enjoy writing. It helps me process and work through my thoughts and feelings. Words can be so powerful! At the end of the day, though, words (and pictures!) can only do so much! I wish that you could all come and see what a week of camp looks like here. I wish you could experience the frustrations of bad weather and problem campers. I wish you could feel the spiritual battles. I wish you could see the smiles on camper’s faces when they’re playing "Peter Pan" or making up their team’s cheer. I wish you could hear us singing the same songs you know, to the same God you serve, but in a different language. I wish you could cry with us at the end of the week when you see a camper you’ve prayed for by name FINALLY make a decision to accept Christ. I wish you could join us for an exhausted, but joyful reflection on God’s faithfulness after the week is over. I wish this so much! I know, though, that no matter how much I write it will never QUITE do justice to the camp experience or the great ways we saw our God work. I think this is why is has been abnormally hard for me to write about the last two weeks of camp. I’ve tried several times without success. But here we go! Here’s a glimpse of the FINAL two camps of the 2010 season!


Teen Camp

If you read my last post, you know that we anticipated that the first week would be tough for a variety of reasons. Those of us who were working with the kids had a completely different experience than those who were working with the teens. We were kind of on our own little island (our motto was "Aloha!"), so everything I know about what happened with the teens is secondhand. HOWEVER, God did some amazing, AMAZING things in the lives of those teens! To those of you who were praying with us, be encouraged that God certainly DID answer your prayers and did more than we could have imagined! He was clearly working in lives all week and by the last day over 35 of the teens testified publicly that they had accepted Christ that week! Hold on, hold on…read that sentence again!! Over 35 teens!! How AWESOME is that! PRAISE GOD with us! He is mighty to save!


Please PRAY with us for these teens. PRAY that they'll desire to be in church and that the church would reach out to them and welcome them into the body of Christ. PRAY for wisdom for the leaders to know how to follow up with them. PRAY that these new believers would see God's power in their lives as they begin to walk with Him and that they'd be encouraged and protected in their new relationship with Him. Incidentally, we’re headed back up to this church this weekend for a “reunion” meeting. We hope to be able to encourage them to continue in their new faith and to be willing to stand for Christ even when it costs something. PRAY with us that God will use this to jump-start the church’s fall ministries.

Kid’s Camp

The kid’s program that week was a stretching experience for me personally, as well as the program director I was assisting (Anca). She had never done this job before, I had never done this job before and so we felt often like we weren’t sure what we were supposed to be doing! Our job that week included (but was not limited to!): planning the schedule, setting up and leading activities, moving tables and benches, managing conflict, sleeping with campers, encouraging and praying for counselors, handing out chocolate AND drinking lots of Coke! :-) It was an overwhelming and exhausting week, but it meant we also relied heavily on our Heavenly Father and each other. A big blessing from that week was that Anca and I were able to work together and communicate VERY well. At the end of the week we thanked God for each other and for giving us unity of thought and spirit. I’m so thankful for her continuing friendship. This was a definite personal blessing from this summer.


We didn’t have any KIDS accept Christ as Savior this week, but we DID see a definite change in the attitudes of some of the kids as the week went on (especially in these two girls in the picture). We know God WAS working on them. Please pray that the seeds that were planted in their hearts will be watered and grow. We were discouraged to see limited visible fruit, but DO trust that we serve a God who continues to work even after camp ends…thank goodness! :-)


Final Teen Camp

Our final week of camp should have been easy. That’s how it looked on paper! We only had 28 campers coming, we were ONLY doing a teen camp, and we actually had more help than we had the previous week! But for whatever reason it just WASN’T. It was a spiritually intense week and we were very aware of Satan trying to distract and disrupt. We had one camper who had to be sent home for discipline reasons (this is a good story…ask me about it!), and another boy was hurt badly enough that (after going to the hospital) he had to go home, too. There also seemed to be a spiritual apathy among the older boys in particular that we were battling all week. But I am SO thankful for the lessons that God had already taught us that summer, because seeing all this didn’t discourage us. It made us pray HARDER. And we prayed in FAITH because we had already seen that our God is capable of doing amazing things. And guess what? He did…AGAIN!! I can’t tell you how AMAZING it has been this summer to see God answer specific prayers over and over and see Him CLEARLY work in camper’s lives again and again! MAN! AWESOME!! So by the end of the week there were ANOTHER six salvation decisions (including the two girls in this picture!) and other decisions, as well, to live a committed Christian life. Remember those boys who were so apathetic? The pastor of the church where a few of them attend called OUR pastor and asked what had happened at camp…because the following Sunday they were sitting in the FRONT row of the church, LISTENING, and (are you ready for this??) TAKING NOTES!! How GREAT is our God??? Please PRAY that these kids will continue to love God and His Word even when the “camp” feeling wears off.


So please, those of you who were praying with us, spend some time THANKING God for what He has done. We certainly have. What a blessing and privilege to get to see Him work and change lives. I hope you’re blessed and encouraged by the way God used your prayers! We felt them and needed them! He heard and used them! What a powerful God we serve!! He is indeed mighty to save!