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I love these kids. I’ve been able, for the last 5 years, to have a connection with the students in Idaho. I first worked at Camp Sawtooth the summer of ’99. Then again in the summer of ’00. In the fall of ’00, I was able to lead worship and help out with two Presbytery-wide events (Grand Spam and Hyperthermia). Then I Deaned (spoke at) Niners Camp in 2002, Niners and High School Camp in 2003 and Niners Camp this year. It’s been awesome to see the students grow up (physically/spiritually) and watch part of their life transformation. Many of the campers in this picture were 4th graders during my first summer at Sawtooth. The rest of the camp week went very well.
Andy and I had a blast working together. Our Wednesday night campfire began with students slowly “journeying”/processing out to the campfire with a few prayer stations along the way. While it took over 30 min to get there and the kids who got out there first were obviously bored after a few minutes, I think it was a pretty powerful way for the students to enter campfire that evening. That campfire went very well, and we were actually able to save every kid and counselor at the camp!! (ha!) No, but I think for some students, that night will serve as a spiritual mile-marker along their journey. We emphasized how much we didn’t want it to be a “cry night” and we did pretty good at that.
Thursday we talked about service, and how God created us to serve God and others (or, in Rick Warren’s lingo: Shaped for Service). I used the story of the Good Samaritan/Homosexual/Muslim/Mormon that night and kids seemed to respond pretty well to it. We finished off on Friday morning. It felt good. Kids asked great questions, and they finally started just interrupting us during our talks (well, at least one kid kept asking me questions on Thursday night, and other students started helping to answer – it was a cool community feeling).
I had shared with some people how I was a little wary of how I was going to be excited about a camp theme that was based solely on The Purpose Driven Life, but Andy and I were able to do it and I think it went over really well. Oh…I know some of you will appreciate this. Our camp shirts are featured below (Bill, Adam and Andy). Porpoise Driven Life. Can you believe it?
