Around 5:30am, Ella woke me up because she had puked on the floor. Thankfully I had brought 2 towels with me so I used one of them to clean up the mess. I tossed that towel in a garbage bag and then threw it outside on the deck. Amazingly none of the other girls woke up during this time. Around 6:30am, I texted Nurse Anne and told her what was going on. By this time Ella had puked again. Nurse Anne was wondering if Ella needed her meds since she was in charge of dispensing those during camp. I told her that she can never take her pills while she's in the middle of a migraine episode. From past experience I knew Ella was most likely going to be sick until around dinner time that night. I wasn't sure how to handle this situation because I was supposed to be present for all the girls, but at the same time my own daughter was sick. I was feeling pulled in two many directions and I was stressed out. I was also super sad because I knew that Ella was going to lose out on a whole day of fun at camp. Wednesday was the big day where they had a bunch of fun activities planned.
Around 7:30am I ended up moving Ella downstairs so she could sleep in the nurses room. Nurse Anne would be able to keep an eye on her so I could be present with the rest of the group. I did stopped by every hour or so to check on her. She was able to finally get a little bit of sleep since she said she really didn't sleep at all the night before. She did puke a few more times while in the nurses room, but eventually she stopped and then I slowly let her start taking sips of water. I was also able to get some crackers from the kitchen so she could try eating those if she felt like it.
After getting Ella moved down to the nurses room, I was able to grab a quick bite for breakfast and then run to the leaders meeting. At those meetings we always discussed what was going well and shifts that needed to be made. They also would ask us for testimonies of things happening with our students. During this sessions we had a breakout time where we could pray for each other. There was this one lady I was just drawn to. Her name was Kendal...I don't even know if I'm spelling that correctly, but she was just amazing. She prayed over me and the whole situation with Ella. She even gave me a hug which I desperately needed at that minute. It was totally the Lord showing up in physical form to let me know that He sees me and He's going to carry me through. It was pretty awesome!
Going into camp I thought it was going to be all about the youth and their relationship growing closer to the Lord and while that was definitely my hope and prayer; that was not the Lord's only goal at all. The Lord most definitely wanted to work through some things with me and it was around this time that I knew He was going to call me to take a huge step of faith in regards to me trusting Him.
Chapel that morning was just what I needed since I was so emotional. I just cried out to the Lord and let the tears fall.
Our students loved this hammock and they sure put it to the test with how many people were on it at one time. Surprisingly....it never did break!
Caitlynn got to be the Unicorn on this day!
More hammock time!
We loved our mascot...Unicorns are the best!
The guys representing yellow team. They really did come up with all sorts of ways to wear those bandanas.
I wore our team flag as a cape. I honestly was having the best time at camp. Even though it was a stressful day it was also so much fun! That day our game was call Tipsy Waitress....it was where you had to spin around a bunch of times, then walk as fast as you could towards a bucket while hold a tray with cup of water on it. Then you would pour the water into the bucket. After that it would move to the next person on your team. You had to do that over and over until the bucket was full. We came in 2nd on that game so we did get some points for our team.
All throughout the week the students were trying to find mini Jesus' that had been hidden all around the common areas. People were supposed to turn in the mini Jesus' they found each day and then they would be rehidden so they could be found the next day. Some people weren't turning them in because they wanted to keep them. There were 100 mini Jesus' in all and they were each worth 50 points. There was also a fire ornament that went with the camp theme "Blaze" that was worth 2000 points. A bunch of our youth found mini Jesus', but one day Josiah found the fire. It was so exciting! I'm in the background of this pictures standing in front of the carpet ball table. I had a lot of fun playing that game with the kids...even though it was super hot!
This day was the day of big events. On the schedule was a color chalk battle, water balloon fight and a water relay race. While us leaders were in the field getting ready for the color chalk battle the workers were also setting up the big inflatable slides.
Us leaders stood in a huge circle. We all had a bag of chalk in our teams color...except team black...they had a different color. Our camp shirts were black so that would not have shown up at all.
That's a big bag of yellow chalk!
They gathered all the kids in the center of the circle and then said go.
It was crazy town! Students running all over throwing chalk on each other. It was really fun!
I was sure that the color was going to show up really well on our black camp shirts, but surprisingly it didn't really stick. I did get hit in the leg with the some of the orange chalk and that did stick on my skin and made it look like I had some terrible disease! :)
Our team didn't look too bad afterwards, but I think that had to do more with the fact that this was our first year at this camp. The other churches knew each other so they went after other people instead of us.
After they posed for this group picture I thought it would be fun to have them all run at me and take a video.
What better time to have a water balloon fight when you just got covered with a bunch of chalk and you need to have it washed off.
While the game organizers were getting the balloons ready we just congregated together as a team for a group picture.
The kids were pretty pumped up from having so much fun. I just noticed that the leader that prayed for me, Kendal, is right behind Jack. Such a sweet lady!
I really loved the camp shirts...they have a dove on them that's overlayed with a flame and it also has our camp theme verse reference on it...Acts 1:8.
They chose to do black shirts because last year when they had the water balloon fight the camp shirts were white and that ended up being an issue.
The field was full of students running around like crazy....I surprisingly didn't get hit with any water balloons!
Here's just a glimpse of the fun....as you can see Pastor got in on the action as well!
The workers that were trying to put up in the inflatables were having some problems getting them to cooperate.
A bunch of students ran over there to help. I'm not sure if it actually was them or just the fact that the air pressure finally moved the monster size slide into place, but the youth were pretty stoked about it.
After the chalk battle and the water balloon fight it was time for a water relay race. I said it was a big day of fun events. Although in all honestly if Ella had to miss out on one day this one probably was the best one for her to miss out on. She's not really into games and such so she probably wouldn't have participated anyways.
All the teams lined up and ready to go!
I guess I was in a video taking mood that day!
That night we were the first group to serve at dinner time. That meant we had to arrive 30 minutes before dinner to help them get the food line all set up. We made sure the water and lemonade was filled up. A couple of the kids got to be servers in the food line. We also made sure the salad area was stocked.
Andrew and Aidry had fun being servers! Dinner was super yummy...it was chicken alfredo with these yummy cheesy breadsticks. We ate well all week long!
After dinner I went in to check on Ella and sure enough she was making a come back right around the time I figured she would. Her body is pretty much like clockwork in that regard. I figured she would feel even better if she got out of the nurses room, took a shower and got into some clean pajamas. So around 6pm I helped her slowly move upstairs into one of the shower rooms. Earlier she was super nauseas anytime she moved, but she was doing okay now. My concern though was that she might pass out since she hadn't really had any fluids in over 24 hours.
I ended up texting Nurse Anne to let her know that I took Ella to upstairs to shower. She hadn't been in the room when I stopped by to check on Ella. I figured I would go down and get the rest of Ella's belongs after I finished helping her. Once she was cleaned up and in new pajamas I went downstairs to grab her pillows and blankets so I could make up her bed. Thankfully she did not puke on any of her bedding. While I was grabbing stuff from the nurses room, Nurse Anne was talking with some students about the gifts of the Spirit...specifically tongues. I heard just a snippet of that conversation since I was wanting to get back to Ella quickly, but it will come into play the next night.
One of the best parts of getting Ella back into our room was how sweet the other girls were. They were so happy to see her and it really brightened Ella's mood. For a while on Wednesday she just wanted her Daddy to come pick her up and take her home, but I knew she needed to stay. I didn't want her to miss out on this awesome time with friends, but more importantly time with God. Michael and I had talked and he said if she still felt bad on Thursday morning he'd drive out and pick her up.
That night at chapel we won for the cleanest room. We were so excited! We had really went above and beyond in hopes of getting that GOAT statue and it paid off!
That night I really felt the Holy Spirit telling me to be still. Usually during worship, I'm up clapping, raising my hands and fully immersed in worship. This night though the Lord was telling me to sit down and just be. I was sitting right next to Mikaela & Caitlynn and it ended up being such a sweet time. Mikaela was pretty new to our youth group so I didn't really know her story much and she hadn't really fully come out of her shell yet. This night since I just sat down next to her and was present she opened up to me and started asking some really deep questions about the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit. It was such a sweet and fruitful time and I was so thankful that I listened to the Lord and had that opportunity with her. The Lord is so awesome!
The funny thing was during worship I also noticed Kendal sitting down to worship which she was normally right up front with all the youth fully immersed. The next morning during our leaders meeting she shared how the Lord had told her to just sit down and be still as well. It just goes to show don't judge anyone for how they are worshipping the Lord even if it's not how you think they should be or would normally worship Him...maybe just maybe they are actually following the prompting of the Holy Spirit!
Every morning at camp I got up earlier than the girls to get myself ready and then when it was time for them to get up I started playing Christian music. Slowly they would start waking up, but a few times I would have to go over and rub the girls' backs and say good morning and tell them it was time to "Rise and Shine". Eventually the girls would get ready and then we would clean up the room. Each church was assigned to clean a certain common area every day. Also each room / cabin was inspected during morning chapel to see who would win the title of cleanest room / cabin for that day.
Each church was also assigned to helping out with a certain aspect of Kitchen Duty. We didn't have our first assignment until lunch time on the second day. The food at camp was amazing and the people that planned and cooked everything were such wonderful, godly people. I had many great conversations with them since the staircase from our room led us right down into the area outside the kitchen.
Every day after breakfast the leaders had a meeting in the Leaders Lounge that was right behind Town Square. This was just a big room with chairs and couches for us leaders to go hang out when we needed to have a breather. It was stocked with all sorts of yummy things both food and drink wise. I don't think I ever really went in there to have a breather during the week. I did lay down in my bed once to just chill out for a minute though.
During our Leaders Meeting every morning I tasked the girls with cleaning the common area that was assigned to us....the two bathrooms that were on the first floor of Town Square. The Leaders Lounge was right outside from the door that led into Town Square and the bathrooms were just inside that door. Once the meeting was over I would head into the bathroom to check out their work and every day I was so impressed. Even other leaders would say how amazing the bathroom looked after our girls cleaned it. The guys were assigned to clean up the field which they did right after breakfast.
Once the meeting was over which it usually ran long we would head over for morning chapel. The entrance to the chapel building was right behind the tent area in the first picture of this post. The students were always so excited for chapel they would just gather outside the door waiting for it to open. Morning chapel was much shorter than evening chapel. We would listen to announcements, watch a video of the day before, have praise and worship and then there'd be breakout devotions with your group. Our group met in the Leader Lounge during that time.
These schedules were posted all over camp so you could check and see what was going on. Of course times were adjusted if things ran over which sometimes they did. I really loved the pace of camp. They had a framework, but they also let the Spirit move and if that meant that something got pushed back then so be it. They also had night games planned every night, however, they didn't list those on the schedule because they knew if the Holy Spirit was moving they were not going to be putting a stop to that to go play night games.
The first day of camp Color Wars wasn't until the afternoon and that's why it was so incredibly hot. All the other days Color Wars happened in the morning prior to lunchtime so it wasn't so hot outside which was so nice for the person wearing the inflatable mascot costume. For the second day Jeremiah was the unicorn!
This particular competition was a relay race and it was VERY confusing. Melissa was the sweetest lady. She was in charge of the games but for some reason this game was very hard for everyone to understand. She explained it multiple times and even after that we were all like..."huh?" So she decided to do a run through and that did help some.
We had to have students stations at different areas of the course. The girls decided to take the last portion of the race so they were strategizing.
Matthew, Stephen and I were just happy to get to chill out on the sidelines.
Caitlynn was at the start of the race for us. She had to hop over to the next station.
Which was where Lucas was waiting. Then Lucas had to hop over to the next station.
Which is where Josiah, Zeke and Jack were waiting. Each of these guys had to take turns running over to a Bible and looking up a certain Scripture verse. After one of them found it they had to race over and tag the other person until all 3 of them found the verses.
Once all the verses had been found then the ladies were able to do their part which was going through an obstacle while keeping a bear off the ground by holding onto these ropes. After they went through the course they were able to run back to the starting line. The girls did drop the bear and run, but that wasn't held against them since that information wasn't clearly stated. We ended up getting first place even though another team thought they won. A first place win gave our team 2000 points! There were lots of different ways to earn points during the week at camp. Coming in 1st, 2nd or 3rd at a game, memorizing Scripture, acquiring bead necklaces and finding mini Jesus'...I'll talk more about that on my Day 3 post coming up.
I completely forgot I took a video of the whole race. Sue is the one that walks by with the fairy wings....I love Sue she was so amazing! If you had any sort of question you could always go to Sue. Truly everyone that put on this camp was top notch and they have such a heart for the youth of this generation.
Once Color Wars was over there was usually a little bit of free time and then we'd had lunch. Our kitchen duty assignment that day was to help with the clean up of lunch we that meant that we got to be first in line to eat. Clean up duty involved emptying the garbage, bringing all the dishes into the kitchen and washing them, washing down the tables, refilling the water and lemonade, sweeping around the food line and under the tables. Our students were so eager to volunteer whenever the kitchen crew said who would like to do this job. They would raise their hands and get to work. The kitchen folks were so so thankful for their hard work.
The time between lunch and dinner was the largest amount of free time. The youth could choose from so many things to do...this was time that the inflatable waterslides were set up. There was a rock wall they could climb. The snack shack was open. There was also all the sports options...basketball, gaga ball, volleyball, carpet ball, ping pong, pool and foosball. At the back of the property there was a zipline and then a bb gun shooting range that also had archery. These kids had no reason to be bored...that's for sure!
One thing that I wasn't sure about at first was the camps decision to allow cellphones. In one of the leaders meetings prior to camp, the director, Noma, talked about how she didn't want any youth to decide not to come because they couldn't have their phone. There were even some parents that had expressed concerns about allowing their kids to come if they couldn't have their phone. Also Noma's thought was that the youth of this generation are going to go out and get jobs and their bosses aren't going to have them turn in their phones or leave them at home. They are going to have to learn to deal with the real world and self monitor themselves and their phone usage. There were a few parents from our youth group that chose to have their kids leave their phones at home; the parents did have my cellphone number so they could reach out to their kids through me, but overall it wasn't an issue. I also can't say that I saw a bunch of kids on their phones. There was honestly so much going on it seemed to me that they were wanting to be present in the moment enjoying themselves.
Ella and a few other girls went out to shoot bb guns and do archery. I tried the archery, but I was terrible at it and my fingers were sore after just doing it a few times. I was better at shooting the bb gun. Ella was really good at it!
At one point we ended up back in our room and we taught Lina how to play the game Trash. She loved it!
I spent a lot of my free time memorizing Scripture with the girls that wanted to so I didn't go out and get pictures of the kids playing on the field. The camp had a lot to do and there was a lot of space, but at the same time it was all easily accessible so I never felt I had to keep tabs on our kids 24/7.
One of the crazy things that happened during free time on this day was when I got a text from my best friend Kim. She and her husband were in Hawaii while all of their kids were with us at camp. There had been an earthquake in Russia so they issued a tsunami warning in Hawaii. They were planning to head for higher ground because they had no idea how bad it was going to be. Of course this is was just weeks after the devastating flooding in Texas so it seemed only natural to take things seriously. She told me to hug her kids and tell them she loved them.
It was so freaky to know that something was coming, not know how bad it was going to be, and also not be able to do anything about it. Of course I started praying right away. That's when I also realized that we were out on the peninsula which is a lot closer than we normally are to the Pacific Ocean. I actually had no idea how far from the water we actually were and with the tragedy in Texas happening during a summer camp I wasn't going to take any chances. I figured this would be good information to pass along to the someone in charge so I ran and found Sue and gave her this information and she said she'd look into it.
Thankfully we were far enough away from the water, but the leadership at camp did take it seriously and was monitoring the situation. An email was sent out to parents letting them know we were keeping an eye on the situation and we were ready to move further inland if the situation called for it. We did not let the kids know that anything was going on...we wanted them to still be present in the situation and not overly worry. There honestly was nothing they could do at that moment. I did let Kim's kids know in very simple explanation what was happening and what their parents were doing and that they loved them. After that it was just a wait and see situation.
After dinner it was time for night chapel. This was the one that lasted for hours, but honestly felt like it was only an hour long. Pastor Dan spoke each night and he was so great. Even though he's up there in years he has this way with connecting with the youth that was so wonderfully simple really. I really enjoyed his preaching!
At the beginning of night chapel they always started out with a game. Then there were some announcements....one of which was who won the cleanest cabin / room that morning. We didn't win that first day and we were bummed, but we were determined to do better the next day.
The worship was amazing....super loud at times, but amazing. It was a youth camp though so that's to be expected! It was about this time that Ella got a headache and started not feeling well. She asked to go back to the room to rest and see if she could get rid of her headache. On our way back to the room I stopped by the kitchen and got her a bowl since usually when Ella gets a headache that means she throws up. I stayed with her and Pastor Tim kept an eye on all the other youth.
While I was laying in bed keeping and eye on Ella I was texting back and forth with Kim. It was around 10:30 our time when she said the first wave was supposed to hit and nothing had come. It was so good to hear that. They had actually decided to shelter in place because traffic was so bad on the island people weren't getting anywhere. They were on the 13th floor of their hotel so they weren't in any danger at that height. They also had a view of the water so they'd be able to see if the water was being pulled out.
When the girls got back to the room, I was able to talk to them about what had happened. A few of them were a little upset that we hadn't mentioned anything earlier, but I explained that they couldn't have done anything about it and it we didn't want to needlessly worry them. Ella had fallen asleep prior to the rest of the girls coming back from chapel. I was hoping that was all she needed, but unfortunately that wasn't the case!
Back in April our Youth Pastor moved to California to work at another church. When the kids came home from youth group and said that he was leaving I turned and looked right at Michael and said..."I guess we're gonna be leading youth group!" There wasn't any hesitation at all. I was not going to leave all these student with no place to come during the week to fellowship and grow in their faith. Thankfully Pastor Tim wasn't going to leave them hanging either so he stepped up to be the fill in Youth Pastor so Michael and I have just been Youth Leaders.
I knew pretty early on that I would be going to summer camp with the youth since I was the only option for a girl leader. I also knew that Ella would not be happy about that and I was correct. She was not happy us being youth leaders or me going to summer camp. I told her right off the bat I would try to ignore her at youth group and pretend that she wasn't my daughter in hopes that it wouldn't bug her so much that I was there on Wednesday nights.
By the time camp rolled around at the end of July she didn't seem too upset about me going anymore and she also didn't seem to care that I was there at youth group on Wednesday nights.
Our group met at church on Monday, July 28th. We were driving two vehicles. Pastor was driving the church van and I was driving my van. Pastor also rented a U-Haul trailer to store all the luggage since the 15 passenger van does not have any sort of storage area. In all we had 2 leaders and 19 youth going.
We drove over to the peninsula and it took us just a little more than 2 hours. The drive was actually really nice. Daniel, who's in the brown coat, sat in the front seat of my van and we had some great talks on the way over.
We actually got there a bit early so we couldn't check in yet. So we unloaded our luggage into piles and then just waited to be assigned to our cabin / dorm room. One of the reasons it took them a bit to give us our room information at least for us girls was because they had us down as having less girls so we weren't all going to fit into one room and since I was the only girl leader that wasn't going to work. They moved things around and instead of us being on the first floor of Town Square (that's what they call the girls dorm building) they moved us up to the 2nd floor.
The guys were staying in either cabin 6 or 7...Jack and Zeke can't agree on the number. The boys cabins were just behind Town Square building. They had all sorts of fun things for campers to do while we waited for everyone to arrive. In all there were 5 churches coming together for camp. This inflatable was super fun and tricky...sadly, but not surprisingly it didn't last long and got popped pretty quickly.
Us girls had fun playing Tetris Tumble.
Our dorm room had a door that led directly outside to a deck area that also had stairs to get down from. It made is SO incredibly nice and quick for us to get outside instead of going through the building and down the stairs. We also had this great view overlooking the whole free time area. From this view you could see the basketball court, skate area, gaga ball pit, volleyball court, 9 square in the air and then all the lawn games. You could also see the flatten inflatable.
We found out later that our room was the only one that had nice flooring. The rest of the rooms had the same material the bunks were made out of as the flooring. We also had a private water closet and a sink outside the water closet. The funny thing is the sink didn't have a mirror over it. Thankfully Aidry brought a make up mirror about the size of a Bible.
Our first team activity happened after lunch around the basketball court.
I had given out the bandanas so the kids were busy figuring out how they wanted to wear them. They were quite creative in how they used them.
It took a while for everyone to get organized so we were waiting for a bit.
One of my goals during camp was to take a bunch of pictures and also to get an individual selfie or as least a small group selfie with every one of our campers.
The kids had fun just hanging out entertaining themselves.
People gathered in color groups around the court.
Listening to the instructions.
The fun part about being a leader was having the inside scoop about what was happening since I had attended the Zoom meetings with the other church leaders.
For this first team competition we had to pick one person from our team to run into the center of the basketball court and retrieve a wrapped package. Of course all the other teams would be sending their designated person at the same time as well. Inside the wrapped packages were inflatable mascot costumes that would become our team mascot for the week. I had told Pastor about it since he wasn't able to attend the meeting. I was so excited about this part because I knew it was going to be hilarious and I had hoped so badly that we would get a unicorn costume.
I was so excited we actually got the unicorn costume. Josiah is in the costume so I ended up wearing his hat.
The team competition included putting on the mascot costume, creating a team name, decorating a flag with that team name and then coming up with a team chant.
Our team name was the The Amazing Blazing Unicorns. We chose that because the theme of the camp was Blaze.
It was fun that the competition was multi-layered since it really taped into different creativity areas.
Our chant was..."We Amaze, We Blaze...We're the Amazing Blazing Unicorns."
Josiah had such a fun time being the unicorn. Although it was VERY hot inside.
After all the teams got into their costumes they had a race with all the mascots. Josiah ended getting way to hot so Jack took over the mascot duties for the race.
The race was hilarious! One of the mascot costumes wasn't able to inflate and then the chipmuck totally took out the chicken.
During the week there were all sorts of ways to earn points for your team. One of them was memorizing Scripture. That was always my favorite thing to do at camp so I knew I was going to help get points that way. The girls all decided they wanted to do that as well so we had some downtime in our room memorizing Scripture.
Jazzy & her cousin's Trina & Kiana
Aidry
Lina
Kylah
Mikaela
Ella Bean
Sarina
Caitlynn
First night at chapel! I was not prepared for the kids to basically rush up to the front I did not know that was a thing, but it was awesome! They were all up there worshiping the Lord with abandon.
Ella has enjoyed Pastor Tim being the Youth Pastor and he's always there for her when she needs him.
