"Belay On!"

My final week of having campers was different than all of my other weeks. For the first time of the summer, I was having Middle Schoolers, you know, 12-14 year olds: Focus Camp. I work with that age group at church all the time. Should be no sweat.

However, my week was far from what I was expecting. For one thing, one of my campers was 16. Yeah, his church wanted him to go really bad, so when he missed the high school week, they worked to get him into the middle school camp. I'll admit, in the beginning of the week, I made this "opportunity" into too big of a deal, but it was quite a change from what I thought the week would be like. The cabin dynamics were interesting with having kids ranging from a sheltered 12 year old to an experienced 16 year old.

With a lot of prayer and support from some of my friends, I was able to manage. Our conversations at night were pretty interesting. And on the last night, I spent 3 hours doing just 3 one-on-one conversations. I think a lot of seeds were planted, and it was a good week, overall.

With Focus Camp, every camper gets to spend 2 hours a day "focusing" on a certain activity they want to work on or challenge themselves in. I worked with the High Adventure focus. It was so much fun to work with our group on goal-setting and challenging themselves. They did the indoor tower, ropes course, Dangle Duo, and outdoor tower. My hands got blistered, but I leared a lot about working to challenge students. It was an awesome experience. "Belay on!"