Back to Reality

Camps have been and gone and now I'm back to the norms of life in a world not overrun by 30-odd kids in a confined space...

The first camp I was on was Mayfield, where I was part of a leadership team, looking after 19 kids. It was terribly dry up there, with countless dead sheep seen, no bathing hole (so no bath for a week) and the threat of a total fire ban hanging over our heads. We knew the river would have plenty of water - being tidal and salt water from the sea, but there were some worries about drinking water.

We were, however, so blessed on this camp, with God answering all our prayers about the weather, right down to the rain that meant we could have our bondfire on the last night (otherwise it was too dry to have a fire, and the rain posed no problem at all - we kept a positive 'Hooray! Rain! The farmers need it' attitude and the kids picked that up too). The theme of the camp was 007 (being 2007) so we had lots of bonding jokes, and the bondfire and James Bond visited every day to show his adventures as a secret agent in Heaven. The campers were fantastic, the leadership team was amazing (a lot of us had been campers on Huon togehter, so it was just like being back there, but with responsibility!) and all in all it was my favourite Mayfield so far.

After driving home from that, via Scorchers in Orford for a caffine refill, I arrived at 6ish to an empty house (which meant I didn't have to worry about suffocating people with my smelliness), chucked my clothes in the washing machine, jumped in the shower for the best shower ever, and pysched myself up for the next camp, to which I was supposed to go that night. But the washing took a while to do, and by the time mum and dad arrived home, I'd made up my mind to just go down the next day...

The next day I headed off to Conningham for Waves. This is a far more relaxed camp than Mayfield - for starters we live in a building, not tents, and I was looking forward to a slightly easier camp. I had a few concerns over the inexperienced leadership team (and smaller team) but knew God would take care of it.

Well I was looking forward to a more relaxed camp, but there is no way I got it. The campers arrived, and for the first couple of hours I was thinking 'this is going to be the longest week of my life' - they all seemed to be off the show. Sent off a couple of 'AHHHHH PSYCHO CAMPERS! PRAY YOUR SOCKS OFF' messages, and from the next day things started to calm down, as they got used to it all. I was one of the first aid officers, and we had so many injuries - usually only little things - little cuts, mozzie bites etc, but I certainly got good at aiming the stingose and antiseptic sprays.... Waves was quite emotionally draining, with so many injuries, and a few rowdy campers who we had to constantly watch. It was still great, with most of the kids stating the middle day, when we went sailing, as their favourite thing. We all had a lot of fun, and although there was a terrible day for the leaders, when just everything seemed to go wrong, the campers didn't seem to notice, and they all had a great time.

One of my highlights was the fact that every single one of the 31 kids, aged 11-14ish really loved watching a 1985 classic movie, Back to the Future. It's one of myt favourite movies, and I was so happy when i didn't hear a single bad comment about it from the campers after we watched it on a rainy night. They were begging to watch the 2nd and 3rd even!!!

So that was camps.... I got home last night, slept for 11 hours, and now I'm awake and with it (unlike yesterday, when i was running on determination not to fall asleep).. I'm looking forward to next years camps already (sad, but they are possibly my year's highlight - I love them so much!) and hope to see the campers from this years grow with God heaps over the coming year. There are some potentially fantastic leaders out there, and I just pray they will stay strong, and keep asking questions and finding out about where they are headed.

God bless,
Imo