Crooked Creek Christian Camp

Well, my short stint at camp this summer has already come to an end. Instead of 6 weeks at Penn York Camp like the last 5 summers, this year I had parts of 3 days (less than 48 hours) of camp. I was sad to leave, but this is not my summer for camp experience.

I got there Sunday evening in time for the staff dessert potluck. I knew a few people there on staff, but I didn't know any of them every well. Campers didn't come until Monday morning, so we had the evening to play around in the Activity Center. I had a chance to play ping pong and pool (say that 5 times fast!) for the first time in a while. A lot of the evening though, I was working on stuff to say to these 1st and 2nd graders that would be arriving shortly.

See, I was the camp pastor for these 2 days of camp. PYC doesn't have that role, so I wasn't real familiar with how it would work. I certainly didn't know how to prepare for 3 20-25 minutes chunks of speaking for Monday and Tuesday. The summer theme at Crooked Creek is "Lost in the Wilderness" so I had the story of the Exodus to work with. Fortunately, that gives a very large selection of exciting stories to pull from! And for 1st and 2nd graders that's all I could ever ask for!

Monday morning I told them that God always keeps his promises. I told them about the 3 promises God made to Abraham and how the first one was kept. It took a while to make Abraham's family into a nation, but after many generations and being freed from Egypt they were finally an independent people. I also shared with them my experience getting lost on Mt. Sinai.

Monday evening we looked at God's faithfulness and the 2nd promise he made to Abraham. God protected and provided for the Israelites at the Red Sea and in the desert with water and food. Yet, even with all the things God did for them, they still complained every single time. So I had to tell the story of Daniel too--a faithful follower who God also protected.

Tuesday morning the Isrealites were finally found and made it to the Promised land--God's 3rd promise to Abraham. It wasn't easy though and they needed a brave and courageous leader like Joshua to do it. All the adult Israelites were scared, so only the kids and Joshua and Caleb could make it all the way across the Jordan. They showed their courage and faith then finally at the walls of Jericho.

I had tons of fun telling all the stories to 73 little pairs of eyes! Kids that age are eager for more stories and can easily get lost in them. They are also quick to answer any questions I would ask even if they didn't know the answer. Mostly though, they knew the answers. The last day a few kids asked me if all those stories were true or if I had read the whole Bible or they just said they liked the stories. That makes all the preparation and loss of sleep totally worthwhile!

When I wasn't preparing or telling stories I enjoyed exploring the camp or just hanging out with kids. Some cabins only had one staff, so I joined them for various meals. I showed 4 foot tall kids that height really does make a difference on the bouldering wall. I was captured by a very organized blob in blob tag. And my win-loss record was barely over 50% at carpetball against kids who love to play. It was so much fun! But after the family picnic Tuesday my time was up.

Today I was back at church working on several things. Mostly it was a Bible study for the MYF crew tonight. Tomorrow I'll be heading to Freeman, SD until Sunday for the annual meeting of the Central Plains Conference. Since my last blog post, we finished up our three days of Bible School and I had a busy Sunday. I was the worship leader, sang with the worship band, sang in the special EMU affiliated church choir, had the privilege to introduce Loren Swartzendruber, and went to an MYF parents meeting.

So, all is going well for me here! Oh, and Duk starts most of the time, but not all of the time (I used it as an example of something that was not faithful).