Chosen- Maranatha 2013

Sometimes you decide to sponsor jr high church camp...and you're the only female sponsor with 11 girls. Did I mention they're in junior high?

And also sometimes, God uses that time to remind you about such very important things as kindness, gentleness, love, patience and the like.

Because when a kid has been on your nerves all week and they keep at you, you have to practice kindness, patience, and love to keep yourself from snapping at them.

Or when a girl is crying over something silly, but she sees as super important and world ending, gentleness and love are the things that will help her through not telling her to cut it out because there's really nothing to be upset about...even though that might be what you're thinking.

Now that it's all said and done, there's a part of me that's sad it already ended and we have to wait a year to go back!

As much as I'm sure all these kids learned, I'm sure I learned infinitely more this week...

I learned some practical things like:

•  How to work as a team of family leaders with people I didn't know and how to connect with these kids who I was around for such a short time.
  
• Take more bandaids to camp...kids hurt themselves...a lot
• Junior high girls do not share my OCD tendencies...so try not to freak out over the messy dorm
• Spend as much time hanging with the kids as possible, even if you can barely keep your eyes open or they want you to do archery with them when you already have huge bruises from archery with a different kid 
  
  
  
• Sadly some kids would rather spend their money on 10 candy bars than give it to missions...that's ok, they're still learning and they have to learn on their own.

I also had the absolute pleasure of listening to some of the most amazing sermons and devotions that I have ever heard! We had two speakers from OCC who both blew my mind with what they had to say...the first showed us pictures of leprosy and explained the disease to us while comparing sin to spiritual leprosy. So true and such a great way to put it and one that I certainly won't forget any time soon. The other speaker from OCC, who was my favorite from the week, recited the Tell Tale Heart....may sound crazy but it was a PHENOMENAL lesson. He said that our old self is like the old man in the story and that we all have an old man to kill. But that once we kill that old self we're left with the dilemma of where to "hide the body". He said that most of us, like in Poe's story, try to hide our old sinful self and act like it never existed...but then it starts to haunt us just like the heart beat in Tell Tale Heart...and then we can't handle it anymore so we shine the light on that old self and we finally tell someone about it. And man do I understand that! Satan has so much power over us when we live in constant fear of someone finding out who we once were. But when we let someone in, when we confess our junk, that power is gone! We realize that there is no longer anything to fear because we  aren't our old selves anymore and we have the power to keep ourselves from going back and when we confess we also have other people to keep us accountable to the way we should be living and help us make sure that old self stays dead where it belongs. 

Also, Rapha House (www.freedomforgirls.org)  was our mission for the week and I basically love Rapha House so I was extremely happy to have them there and support them. I also loved seeing our kids wanting to learn more about Rapha because they too had hearts that were broken by the stories we heard. I couldn't help but remember the first time I heard about Rapha and learned about the girls there...my heart was broken for them, I wanted to help so much...all I wanted to do was jump on a plane to Cambodia right then and there. A huge part of my heart still aches to go to Cambodia and wrap my arms around these girls and let them know how loved and worthy and beautiful they are. 

I am so thankful to have Maranatha Bible Camp as a part of my life for so long now! I have so many memories there and God has done and continues to do so many big things in that amazing place! 

Pray for the camp staff as they keep pouring out love to different kids all summer, they are truly a wonderful group of kingdom workers.