Treasure Seekers - Truth and Girl Talk

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” John 8:32

Guys are cool. I love hanging out with my boyfriend, I have male friends, and sometimes nothing beats spending some time with a group of mixed genders. But every girl needs some girl time. For the last week of Grace's youth camps, I had a whole lot of girl time with 4 staff and 26 middle school girls. This was Treasure Seekers.

Working with 12-14 year old girls had its share of... well, drama. There were a range of maturity levels, a range of attention spans, and lots and lots of hormones. And those hormones led to tears, particularly in my cabin. Of 9 girls, I saw 6 of them cry at one time or another; and a couple of them cried over something almost every day. I have the spiritual gift of mercy, and God surely needed me to use it this week.

Last week it was somewhat hot in the kitchen. This week it was hot... everywhere. Lucky for the Treasure Seekers, we were pampered all week long by staying in the only air conditioned building on campus. Besides being pampered this way, we also spent a lot of down time chatting as only girls love to do, we had a spa night, and a fancy dinner where we got to put on our Sunday best and look cute.

But this week was far more than outer beauty and being girly. Rather, we were focused on what it means to be a Godly woman in today's culture. Specifically, our focus centered around seeking truth over the lies that we hear every single day. We looked at lies versus truth in several different areas – the truth about lies, the truth about God, the truth about relationships, and the truth about ourselves. In looking at truth, we first studied the lies the world tells us about the different areas, such as God isn't involved in our lives, we need a boyfriend to be happy, you must perform well or look a certain way to be valuable, God should just fix all our problems, and several more. Those lies were replaced by truths such as I am fearfully and wonderfully made, God is enough, God cares about every detail of our lives, and much more about the way we are viewed and valued. We had speakers each night, followed by discussion time and some time for each girl to journal.

The curriculum was so relevant to young women in today's society; middle schoolers and high schoolers hear those lies daily, from the media, friends, or even within their own minds. The lessons were even relevant to twenty-something-year-olds or older. I still find myself caught in some of those lies, and need to meditate on what is the truth. The talks really hit home for the girls, as evidenced by the questions they were asking, their attention to their own personal devotions, and the one-on-one discussions I had.

Those lessons were carried out in other experiences during the week. At the climbing tower, we focused on overcoming challenges and how holding onto the truth isn't always going to be easy, but perseverance and overcoming those lies is rewarding. At the zipline at the very end of the week, the girls left the biggest lie that has been invading their life at the top of the zipline, than zipped away from that lie. My girls also wrote on their targets things they needed to get rid of in their lives while at the ranges, and shot 22's at those targets.

This week was a week full of impact, and that came out in some of my one-on-ones. Wednesday night, we answered questions from the anonymous question jar, and through that not only taught them about life, boys, being a girl, and interacting with their parents, but also our speaker shared the salvation message using the analogy of the cross as a bridge. That talk brought a lot of girls to make the decision in their lives to live for Christ and start their own relationship with Him, including some of the girls from my cabin. One girl committed that night during the talk, another recommitted her life during our one-on-one while everyone got ready for bed. A third from my cabin had told me originally that she wasn't in a relationship with Christ yet, that she felt as though she was standing on the edge, almost ready but not quite. I checked in with her later, and found out during one of the morning devotional times she finally felt she was ready and committed her life. God was moving every week, but there was something special about how He moved in the hearts of the Treasure Seekers this week.

This brings us to the end of the youth camps Grace Adventures puts on for the summer. Last year at this time, I was headed home; many counselors from this summer have now departed, finished with their contracts. The next 4 weeks I have left are going to be spent working either adventure staff (running activities, cleaning grounds, and so on) or Tim Team while GA hosts a guest group that comes in yearly called Surf City. This program is separate from Grace, bringing in large groups of inner city kids from Pittsburgh to use our grounds for their camp experience. I've heard amazing things about this program, and can hardly wait to see what these weeks will bring for those kids and the staff as I and many others transition roles. Stay tuned for many God-sightings, funny stories, and new experiences as the rest of the summer plays out.

I thank God for what He's done this summer; I could never have expected the changes God has brought in my heart and life, and wouldn't have pictured this is what my life would like only 2 months ago. Pray for me and the staff as we prepare ourselves for what's to come, and for the many lessons God has left to teach us.  

Tim Team week 1 - kicking butt, taking names

Well, here we are with only one week left of the Grace camps; 5 weeks left to go in my contract. Nuts!

From June 30 to July 5, I was with Family Camp, hence no blog post about that week. Though exciting things happened, I didn't see it worth writing a whole post. Just know that it was refreshing, fun, and I had an awesome family I hosted as well as got to hang out with staff members more often.

Then, for this past week, I spent my first week out of 5 as Tim Team counselor. Praise the Lord, I'm back with my high schoolers!

We had nearly a full Tim Team week, which is a first for this summer. I had 5 girls, and there were also 4 guys (full is 6 of each gender). My fellow counselor this week was Josh, which was really good for my first week as he has worked Tim Team many weeks when he was in high school himself so could guide me, a girl without the first clue as to the details of the responsibilities we have on Tim Team.

Essentially, every day our schedule looked a little like this:

7:15 Wake up/get ready. Actually, for my girls and myself, that was more like 6:45 or 7:00.

7:40 Personal devotion time

8:10 Set up the dining hall for breakfast. This included setting out cups (if we hadn't done that after dinner), getting juice pitchers, and prepping the dish room to be ready for us to start working after we finished eating

8:25 Eat breakfast, and try to finish by about 8:45 so we can start dishes or our work project

8:45-10:30 Work in our crews. For this week, with a larger amount of Tim Teamers, we split into 2 crews, with Josh heading one while I headed the other. Every meal it switched who was doing what. If my crew was in the dish room at breakfast, we would be doing a work project after lunch, then we'd be back in the dish room at dinner.

10:30-11:30 Either a work project for the whole team or Bible study

11:30 Back to the dining hall to set up lunch!

12:20-2:30 Work in crews

2:30-4:30 Scheduled activity, which might be free time or a field trip or Bible study

4:30 Back to dining hall

5:30-8:00 Work in crews

8:00-11:00 Night activity, usually with Venture Out which was the middle school camp, and showers

That pretty much sums up what went on in a general sense. It was actually nice for me to have just a few specific things I knew we would be doing every day, rather than feeling like every day brought something completely new and running all over camp to this activity and that activity.

My week actually flew by, faster than most weeks at camp so far. All 9 campers came ready to work, which was a giant blessing. I had some conversations with some of the girls about campers who chose not to do Pathfinders because they didn't want to work; the Tim Teamers I was talking with thought that was poor reasoning, because they find working with Tim Team actually fun and not really that much work at all. To hear young high school students finding work beneficial and not a burden was really encouraging. Even more so, I saw campers who I taught during Pathfinders step up into leadership roles, which is exactly the type of outcome the program is aiming for.

Furthermore, I really appreciated spending at least some time with Venture Out campers and counselors every day. Tim Team can sometimes feel secluded and cut off from the rest of camp. Having the schedules mix allowed for my campers to talk to their friends in the camp and learn from what their peers (or only slightly younger students) were learning from. I appreciated seeing some of my friends who were counselors in the camp, and still being able to spend some time having fun outside of the kitchen.

I won't say we didn't have hiccups. There were times the kids tried my patience or weren't always serving joyfully. There were times I felt discouraged and lost as to what I was supposed to do, and not sure I was leading well. But overall, this was an excellent week. I got to further those relationships I began in Pathfinders, something few counselors get to do, since they only see those campers for one week. I can hardly wait to see more kids come back for other Tim Team weeks, and to continue to serve the camp joyfully myself while leading kids to do the same.