Last couple of weeks

Well camps are over. Here are some highlights from my last couple of weeks:

Kitchener: I love going back to Kitchener. Seeing everyone again was awesome. There are some assistant coaches that were campers my first year, so its good to see them coming back and growing from year to year. It’s also really cool to see returning campers. Madison came to camp last year and I recognized her. Monday afternoon, Madion’s mom came to the field to watch world cup. I went up to her to see who she was watching and found out that she was Madison’s mom. I made small talk with her, mentioning that I remembered Madison from last year and then I talked to her younger son. After a few minutes I moved on, thinking nothing of it. The next morning before camp began, Amanda – the coordinator – mentioned that she received an email from Madison’s mom saying how nice it was to see young people truly love and invest in their kids and mentioned how much she appreciated me coming up and talking to her son and remembering Madison from the year before.

Erin: I was both excited and nervous to go to Erin. I was excited because it was Erin and I have awesome memories from previous camps, but I was nervous because this was Erin’s second camp of the summer and I wanted it to be fun and new for the campers who went to both camps, but I didn’t know how to do that. So we had fun changing the schedule. Monday we started off with a bang with a game of castles (usually we don’t do castles until Wednesday). We switched a couple of other things as well. Tuesday we had Twisted Tuesday. Twisted Tuesday is when we put all aspects of the schedule plus some fun things in a hat and had the kids pick what we were going to do next. It was awesome cause we didn’t know what to expect. We even had story time with Darren, which turned out to be the highlight of the day for most of the campers. The kids totally caught on to Twisted Tuesday and wanted to have a theme for Wednesday, so we called it Wacky Wednesday. It actually wasn’t that wacky, it was the normal schedule with one or two changes...and we might have had wacky hair. Then it was Throwback Thursday. For Throwback Thursday, everyone could wear their oldest AIA t-shirt. It was great; we had some shirts from 4 or 5 years ago. Throwback Thursday also had an emphasis on the back for backwards day – our schedule was backwards. Then Friday was Fun, Fantastic Friday, with lots of games. All in all it was an interesting week with the schedule changes.

Huron Chapel: Our last week of camp. A week of lasts: last time saying our testimonies, teaching the skills of the day, fast footwork, going through coaches corner, and the last week together as a team. Although it was a week of lasts, it didn’t really feel like the last week. And there was a first during this week for me as well: it was my first week this summer leading a small group. Usually I don’t take a small group so that I can be available to pray for the groups and/or take a camper or two who are distracting their own group, but this week we needed a few more leaders, so I took one. I had the youngest group and they did get pretty distracted, but it was still fun to hear all their stories and try to help them understand what we were talking about in small groups. One of my highlights was lunchtime. Hanging out with a few of the kids and just talking and getting to know them was really cool. Another highlight was all the Bibles that we gave away. Each day we gave out 2-4 Bibles to the kids. One day, Matthew wanted one and we were talking a lunch, so I got one for him and then sat down with him and explained the differences between the different books in the New Testaments. And going to the beach with the assistant coaches for a swim, dinner, and beach soccer was also a blast.

So now my summer of camps are over and a new part of my life is just beginning...