Student Life Camp

Stafford Crossing students My Family Life Group

My seat-mate all week

I'm still recovering from Student Life Camp last week. These are the students in whose lives I got to share for 5 days. It was an amazing, hard, wonderful experience. Half way through the week, when there were more hard things to deal with, I was moaning to God about it. I felt like He was reminding me that I did say I wanted to go on a mission trip and not a retreat. From the moment we got there, there were challenges and things that just didn't happen the way they should have. I had planned on working on my Bible study and reading some while I was there. I found out just a week before that I would be leading a small group all week. When I got to camp, it was evident that I was expected to spend most of my time with my group--even their rec time. Then free time was spent with our own kids from our church. There was no time to study or prepare (aside from sacrificing some of the scant 6 hours of sleep allotted for each night). Despite these upheavals and more, the week was worth the work. I was moved. I hope I was changed. I was challenged to live my life fully for Christ according to His directions in the Bible. I was really challenged to care for the poor and to not shut my ears to the needs around me. I hope that Ben was changed as well. He decided to sponsor a boy from Thailand through Compassion International. The speaker was great--David Nasser, and the band was even better--Unhindered. The best thing was that I got to pray with a student who wanted to give his life to Jesus and become a Christian. I can't describe how that felt except to say that it was worth it all. I am hoping that maybe Chris can go next year, too. Maybe we'll even do Mission Camp instead. It's hard to be home. I really like who I was there. I'm trying to find that here.