It's Been Good.

~ Sarah, Sarah, Dawn, Anne, & Mrs. Lytle ~

Camp is always a time of good food (no bias here:D), fun, fellowship, and of course the main focus is the preaching. It's not often we get to go away for a couple of days and have no distractions (although my cell phone rang a lot during the last three days... counselors and cooks trying to contact one another!) But it was so sweet to minister to the campers by way of preparing good food, and of course the kids cleaned up most of the food! Mrs. Lytle gets better and better each year: when I first went to camp as a cook, I came home with a huge box of food. This year I came home with three items:o).

Not only do we have good food, but we also try to play some games... although this game takes the prize for being the wierdest game I have seen played at a camp. The kids were told to cut the banana up and then after they cut it up (and in this case, the girls butchered the banana!), then they were told they had to sew it back up needle and thread style. It was hilarious trying to watch this kids sew up the bananas. Their personalities came shining through as some of them were neat and orderly and others were just giant blobs. Isn't the internet great for finding games like this?;) But the application was made that regardless what relationships we have, once the relationship is cut up (by bitter words or anger or whatever), then it is hard to put it back to together "just like it was". Each game had an application and each application was profound, yet simple.

Probably the funniest game for me was to watch the guys play American Eagle (mud style!) and get absolutely covered in mud and to go back inside laughing only to come back outside in a few minutes and see my pastor have mud all over his shirt and pants! Here Bro. John paid all the guys a dollar to go up to Pastor and give him a hug;o). I hope Pastor didn't make any visits on the way home!

Another thing that thrilled my heart was to see the "little" blessings along the way. For instance, Sunday night while the rest of us were serving snacky stuff to the teens, Sarah #1 went and made all of our beds and got out our pillows. Afterwards she put a little pink bag with hearts on our pillows. When I opened mine up, I started laughing hard! Inside were three items: hand lotion, a nail file, and fingernail clippers. To anyone else it would've been a nice gesture. To me it was a reminder that God will answer before I even call. I've been needing fingernail clippers for a long time, but was just too cheap to go buy a pair. But God knew I needed them and used Sarah to provide them! What a special blessing:o). Another time we were looking for the 8 bread baskets we brought to camp, but only found 5. All we needed was one more and it was non-existent. The whole kitchen staff was looking for this one basket, and as I looked I prayed, "Lord, we just need one basket." No sooner had I finished praying, that I found the one basket! Isn't God good?!?!

The only downside (that I can think of...:D) to being a cook is that I can't hear any of the messages. One year we tried to set up a telephone connection using a cell phone, but it was more of a headache for the poor guy who had to keep fixing it then anything else. So I can't tell you what the messages were about, but two kids did get saved and more made decisions. Bro. Jonathan did an excellent job from what I heard and the Holy Spirit was working on several hearts. Now is not the time to stop praying; the battle is not over. Satan would like nothing more than to destroy what has been done at camp. Praise God for the victory over sin, and pray for these young people.

It's good to be home, but I'm sure glad I didn't have to miss camp this year... of course, there's always summer camp in June;o). To see more pictures from camp, go here.