Summer 2014 Week 3! Fun at Camp Wesley

  This past week was the third week of camp. Since there was no Wilderness Adventures, or variation on it at Camp Otterbein, I was sent to be a counselor for the week at another camp in our conference, Camp Wesley. It started off pretty rough. In spite of getting a couple of volunteers and me, the camp was severely understaffed. Their program leader was even my co-counselor. I felt so bad for her having to do 2 jobs at once all week. On the bright side, she is a great friend of mine so we appreciated the chance to spend some time together! We had a group of 11 girls ranging in age from 9-16. I was overwhelmed to say the least and clueless. The schedule was different from what I'm used to and dealing with 11 campers was terribly overwhelming after having 3 and 4 campers the previous weeks! I also suffered through a terrible case of poison ivy that was continually spreading all week. Based on the timing, I'm pretty sure the exposure happened during the previous week's game of CTF at Camp Otterbein. Apparently I have developed a new allergy. Lovely.  :-p  In spite of these things, it ended up being an absolutely wonderful week!

 

  After a couple of days of everyone struggling, we all figured out how to run more efficiently and connect with the campers more effectively on Wednesday. The camp that I was counseling for, called Extreme Outdoor Adventures, went ziplining that afternoon too. It was such a great time soaring through the trees. Two of the more difficult campers were in my group (I decided to take on the challenge of the rebellious teens) and even they were grinning and cooperating more than I'd seen them all week long. On the bus ride back to Camp Wesley, one camper opened her Bible and started reading passages. She was sitting next to me, so she asked me questions as she had them: we had a great discussion and one of the other campers nearby chimed in too. Though the bus ride was far from calm (there were several rambunctious, rebellious campers and I was the only adult riding), this conversation made it worth it.

  Thursday night was the final worship and a foot washing at the lake. At first, I was a bit freaked out about the idea. Feet are gross. And I had to touch 11 campers' feet. It ended up actually being an amazing spiritual experience for the campers and for me. Katie and I each washed a foot of each camper and then prayed together over them one at a time. There were lots of hugs and tears. After the foot washing, there were a couple last songs. Of all the elements, water is the most soothing and the one I connect with spiritually the most. I was starting to feel incredibly sad and moved closer to the lake, standing right in front of the water. I didn't want to say goodbye to our campers, or my friends at Camp Wesley, who there's a good chance I won't see for the rest of the summer. Some of them I might not see for even longer. As the tears threatened to leak from my eyes, one of my campers stood beside me and put her arm around my shoulders. On the other side, another staff member, my good friend Andrew put an arm around my other shoulder. The 3 of us swayed, looking at the water. A wave of contentedness and calmness came over me. Those tears turned into a smile. And the camper, who had also accepted Christ for the first time the previous night, was beaming. It was a truly wonderful moment.

  Friday morning began with my waking up my cabin group with the chicken dance. Big fun! Haha! Later that morning, all of camp played Gold Rush. This game is an exciting tradition to Camp Wesley like Capture the Flag is to Camp Otterbein. It's similar to CTF too, except it's played in the daylight and instead of finding and getting a flag, you have to run and get as many of the other team's pieces of "gold" as possible. The sweat was pouring and my hypoglycemia went crazy, but it was so much fun! Fortunately we went for a final swim not long after that. Before long at all, it was time to send the campers home. The week that at first seemed impossible came to an end. Through excellent teamwork, lots of prayer, and a ton of dedication, we all made it.

  Before heading back to Athens for the weekend, I stayed to enjoy one last meal with some of my Camp Wesley staff friends. We had some delicious Dutch oven jambalaya and cobbler beside the lake enjoying a gorgeous sunset and each other's company. It was the perfect end to the week. I miss them all so much already!

 

 

  Today (Saturday) I've spent most of the day relaxing, and finally put aside my stubbornness to see a doctor about the disgusting rashes all over my legs. I'm drugged up on all sorts of fun stuff because such a severe case required aggressive treatment. Good thing the upcoming week is shortened because of 4th of July! Hopefully whatever counselors are there with me for Wilderness Adventures will have plenty of patience to deal with my loopyness.  It's still going to be great though; I just know it!  :-)

 

 

Summer 2014: Week 2! Exciting Wilderness Adventures!

  Last week was the second week of camp and first week of Wilderness Adventures. We had only a few campers and a few issues (such has a camper with a 48 hour stomach bug and a camper who really wanted to go home for the first couple of days), but we ended up having lots of fun too! We had a couple of great nights of worship around the fire in our small group as well.

 

  As usual for Wilderness Adventures, we had 2 trips during the week. The first one was a kayaking trip down the Hocking River on Tuesday. We even got to play with Camp Otterbein's new whitewater kayaks at the end. One camper was terrified at first, but I coached her through it and she eventually started playing in the waves with the rest of us, smiling. Some of us braved "The chute" (a small waterfall) too. No one tipped over! And it was exhilarating!

On Thursday, we went hiking at Old Man's Cave in Hocking Hills with another small group. I inadvertently took us on a much longer than planned hike, but everyone said they had a great time in spite of being exhausted. And the scenery was gorgeous!

  On Wednesday, one of our activities was mountain biking. It was going great at first. At the end, I gave everyone the option to go down a hill for the camper that wanted the extra challenge. To my surprise, another camper also decided to try. He had done the rest of the bike ride without trouble, so we figured he could do it. The older camper rode first since he's a very strong cyclist and I followed. As we waited for the other camper, we heard a terrible scream and ran as fast as possible to help out. As we ran up the hill, we found the small camper laying down crying, surrounded by the 2 counselors and our program leader (second in command of camp), who just happened to be in the area at the time. They had already checked for more serious injuries (and found none) and started patching up his myriad of scrapes and scratches. We got the health officer who happened to be nearby to help out as well. Being the leader of the activity, I felt terrible. Fortunately, the camper was only scraped and bruised a bunch, nothing more. A bit later when I had some alone time, I just broke down, imagining how bad it could've been, praying my gratitude that our camper didn't get hurt any worse. That moment was not just a meltdown point, but also my spiritual breakthrough and biggest "God moment" as we call them for the week. It was amazing just how well protected that camper was. For the rest of the week, he was able to fully participate in activities and had a great attitude about the whole thing. The health officer just had to re-patch him a lot.

  Thursday night was the Camp Otterbein tradition of Capture the Flag. As usual, we had a blast! I spent most of the game sneaking through tall grass at the edge of the forest. It was super fun, but I made the mistake of wearing shorts instead of pants. And I am still dealing with the consequences of this (I'll explain in my next post). We had time for 2 rounds of the game, and each team won one. Yay for everyone being winners!

Overall, that week went pretty well. And I could not have asked for better counselors to help lead the adventures!

ROCK!

   The first week of camp was absolutely amazing! The bar has been set really high for the rest of the summer! We took a road trip to West Virginia and went on some awesome adventures!

 

    The first two days were spent at Seneca Rocks. There, we did some climbing and hiking. On the first day, we hiked up high to a great, but challenging climbing area. Not too long after lunch, we got chased away and drenched by rain. It cleared up by the time we hiked back down to our van. And we still decided to go for a swim in the large creek (or small river) right beside the mountain.

    The second day, we went to the top of the mountain and had our packed lunch up there. The view was just breathtaking! At about the same time as the previous day, the rain started. It once again cleared up by the time we hiked back down to the van. We then stopped by the visitors center and headed to our next campsite, a couple hours away.

    The next campsite was right beside a river and had a sheltered area to set up our tents so we could stay dry overnight. There was plenty of rain that night, so the shelter helped a lot. The downside was the train tracks just across the river and the road right up the hill from us.

     The next morning, we did a wild cave tour at Lost World Caverns. This was almost everyone's favorite part of the week. So much fun! We crawled, rolled, and climbed through some awesome passages! The guides were very fun and helpful.

    
    After caving, we headed to our last campsite, at River Expeditions, a whitewater rafting company. In spite of the rain (again), we enjoyed one last campfire dinner together and some great discussions. We even had a furry visitor! A kitty! She was very friendly and actually stayed for most of the evening. I really hope she had a home and was just exploring.

    
     On our last day, before heading back to Camp Otterbein, we went whitewater rafting on the New River. The water was surprisingly warm and refreshing, rather than cold like we thought it would be. We went on rapids ranging from class II to class V. We even had the opportunity to swim through a couple of the milder class II rapids. The rapids were exhilarating! Especially those class V's: wow! And we managed not to have anyone fall out through the entire trip.

     Arriving back at Camp Otterbein was bittersweet. It was great seeing the other camp staff members, who I really missed. However, it was sad to see our adventure come to an end and have to say goodbye to the amazing small group of campers. The group grew so close throughout the week!

     Someday, I plan on going back to all of these places! West Virginia is an amazing state full of wonders!