BC

A couple of weeks ago, I finished my first co-op term. I am so thankful that I had that amazing opportunity to learn more about the real world. A couple of days before I left, my boss asked me if I was excited to leave the office. I came up with a pretty good answer on the spot: “It’s not that I’m excited to leave this place, it’s just that I’m REALLY excited to start camps again.” My boss thought that was a pretty good answer.

Excited to be at camps again. That doesn’t even come close to what I was feeling. Ever since about mid-September, I was ready to be back in the camp mode.

This year, I am head coach of a team. At first when D and Clarke asked me if I would be willing to take this opportunity I wasn’t completely sure. I thought it would be a good experience, but I didn’t think I was going to be able to do a good job. I thought about it and talked with my friends to see what they thought. The one thing that kept echoing in my mind was Clarke saying: “Maybe this is the summer that God is going to stretch you.” Well God is starting to stretch me.

All the head coaches in Ontario, Alberta, and BC had head coaches training out in BC – the head office of Athletes in Action. This was my first trip out to BC. The view was amazing. Loved seeing mountains everywhere I looked. When I first landed in BC, I was greeted by Nate (who arrived a couple of hours before me) and my roommate: Ade. It was great seeing her again. Then we went back to Ade’s house, met her family and crashed. The next morning Ade dropped us off at the Power to Change office, where we spent the next couple of days.

It was really cool to see the office and where everything happens. We got a grand tour of the whole building, and saw the different ministries working under Power to Change. There are about 31 ministries working under Power to Change. Amazing work that they are doing. After that, it was down to business. There were three head coaches from Ontario (two Toronto teams, one Ottawa team), one head coach for Alberta, and two from BC. There were also two volleyball head coaches and one hockey head coach.

Saturday morning, Michael Horne came in and talked to us about defending the gospel. Michael is an apologetic who was able to put all his knowledge into words that I could understand and share with a 7-13 year old. One of the questions that a couple of campers asked me last year was: why does God let back things happen? I’m sure I didn’t answer that question very well. Michael made it so simply. If you scrapped your knee and had pain from that scrap, would you cut off your leg, just to get rid of the pain? Of course not, sometimes bad things happen so that worse things don’t.

After learning how to defend the gospel, we took a trip to Metro Town – a shopping mall where we were given a spiritual interest survey. There were four questions: Who do you think God is? Is there a right and a wrong that everyone has to live by? Do you think the Bible is a reliable historical book? Who do you think Jesus is? We got a lot of different answers. Some people were more willing to talk than others. I don’t usually like to do that, but it was pretty cool once they got talking. After Metro Town, we took the sky train into Vancouver and walked down to English Bay. I put my feet in the Pacific Ocean (yes, I was a tourist) and we took a couple of team pictures, then we started a beach soccer game with some random people. It was a lot of fun.

Sunday we worked on preparing and sharing a short devo’s and our personal testimonies. We also took a quick break to play beach volleyball. Monday we learned the difference between a good camp and a great camp. Tuesday we broke up into our different provinces and sports and talked about what a day of camp looks like and what our role as head coach is. Tuesday night, Ade came and we went to White Rock. Not going to lie I was pretty disappointed with the actual “white” Rock. But the ocean and the mountains were beautiful! Then it was time to head back to Ontario to being our summer of camps.