This past week I was able to go to Pleasant Valley Christian Camp in Mineral, Washington. It was the most powerful week in my life. I have never felt God working so hard through everyone at the camp. In the same way I have neer seen the Devil working so hard at one camp.
What I'm about to tell you is just the bare minimum of how the Devil tried to corrupt everyone there. For starters, our youth intern ending up severly injuring himself. His foot was so swollen he couldn't put a shoe on and it was all black and blue. He went to the hospital and had no broken bones, but unfortunately didn't end up coming back to camp. Then, in addition my sister Erika,was my counselor. I mean it wasn't a bad thing, but I was ready for it to be a really interesting week. I'll get back to that though. She ended up with a stress fracture in her foot. She toughed out the week. But my sister Stephanie ended up coming down to be her co-counselor. Because at the beginning of the week she had no one else to work with and she had the biggest cabin! Then, I also ended up hurting my knee during a slip-n-slide version of kick ball. I had fun, but it hurt REALLY bad.
We also had a huge thunder and lightning storm on Thursday night. The sound was so loud it hurt your ears and shook the cabins! The lightning was so bright that it lit up the whole room! It was very frightening. It also carried through into the morning, and it POURED all night long and morning. We stayed in cabins about a quarter mile from where the base of the camp was, so they took 15-passenger vans and shuttled all the kids down to camp. We stayed down there for 5 hours and had absolutely nothing to do. Luckily, we lost NO campers for the storm. That is only a piece of how hard camp was. In total we only lost two campers throughtout the whole week. But bigger than that, a lot of people lost a piece of their pain, and left it their forever.
One of those people was me. I struggled through a lot throughout the week, and I fought to the limits against it. And I feel so much stronger now that I have. And for the first time in my life, I felt God speaking to me. Wednesday night, one of our interns, Martin was preaching and he talked about how God gives Grace to everyone. That led our whole cabin to open up about A LOT of different things. For me, it was about going through life and being verbally bullied. The next morning I was reading through the Bible and found this GREAT verse. Ephesians 5:6- Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient. In that moment, I knew instantly that God was talking to me. I have never felt that way in my life and it was such a powerful moment for me.
I believe that this week has changed my life completely. I feel that a majority of the is because of my youth pastor, Ryan Reed. His messages throughout the week helped me to overcome and open up about a lot of the challenges in my life. I would also like to thank our youth interns Martin and Skylar. Although, they are only interns and are leaving at the end of the summer, I do believe they played a big part in the transformation of my life. Lastly, I would not have had such a powerful week without my sister, Erika. She knew a lot of my struggles and was able to help me understand that once I got through it, I would only be stronger. I will never ever forget this week, no matter what. And, for the record, there are some really funny things that I will cherrish for the rest of my life too!
{}"Girl! You Cra-Cra! You drive like my Grama!!!!" (Specifically said in a light southern accent.)
{}Answering every question with "JESUS!" in a cute little kid voice.
-Thankyou to Skylar for those funny things I am sure to remeber!
Camplife: Smile About It!
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