Hey Staff check out another great blog post from a former Counselor at camp. If your still questioning to come back to camp this would be a great read for you. Remember to save your spot even if you don't know if you can come back you need to get your Application in. So if you haven't filled that out and sitting there not 100% knowing what you are doing this summer you need to get online and fill out that application. When April comes and that "one thing" you thought you might do falls through you already have your application in and you just might be able to come back to camp. We love returners and camp isn' the same without you so give this a good read and remember how much God can use us here when we move out of the way. If you know you can't come back to camp then like Rachel said tell your friends and find someone to serve in your place. We are looking forward to the STAFF REUNION Friday and hope all of you can make it. 

“You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He.”

-Isaiah 43:10

I never went to camp as a kid and quite frankly, the idea terrified me. I couldn’t leave my own bed for a night to sleep over at my friend’s house until the seventh grade. Yet even so, as I walked into my interview in October of 2012, I had a terrifying feeling that God, in His great grace and laughter, had a much bigger plan for my life than I did. Summer of 2013 at Camp War Eagle radically wrecked my heart and set me on a completely different trajectory than I could have ever imagined. There was no doubt I would return for another summer.

            Shakespeare writes, “All the world’s a stage.” I grew up acting and have made friends with the spotlight. Coming back as a returner in 2014, I expected to be out in front, leading other counselors to success. The expectation was on me, right? I had been here before and summer 2014 would be a piece of cake. 19^th century minister Andrew Murray describes humility as, “nothing but that simple consent of the creature to let God be all.” The world might be a stage, but the Star of the show is not me, nor any of us for that matter. This summer was characterized with God patiently and faithfully showing me what could happen when I stepped aside and let Him be all.

It begins at a crossroads: will I let Rachel or God be all? Letting Rachel be all only led to discouragement, stress, and frustration with my own performance and those around me.  

Letting God be all meant not charging into the cabin to take the lead with my co-counselors, but remembering gentleness and humility (after all, my first session last year started with me asking my co, “What’s the morning show?”). I learned that true leadership is not seen in the front lines of battle, but on the sidelines, encouraging, strengthening, and spurring on those around me. (Or as Erin Wiltse put it in one of my evaluations, “When the Lord tells you to shut your mouth, shut your mouth!”) I was humbled and blown away by the incredible leadership and service displayed by every co I had this summer and I learned so much from every one of them. Never underestimate a woman in love with the Lord.

Letting God be all meant admitting that sometimes (actually a lot of times) that I was wrong. Like the time I screamed bloody murder, hurdled over a 17-year-old camper, and abandoned my entire cabin when an armadillo waddled out of the woods during camp-out.

Letting God be all meant stepping away from the notion that being chieftess meant I was really cool and intimidating (hahahaha) and serving the coaches and players. It meant taking time to get to know every coach, whose love, energy, and effort make tribal competition all it’s supposed to be. It meant encouraging, encouraging, and more encouraging of everyone I came in contact with, even when I was feeling empty. It meant enduring and wiping the sweat away (even when my daily thoughts rotated between, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”, “I can’t feel my legs.”, and “WHY do they put tribal comp games all they way down at the lake fields?!”) because there’s always work to be done.  

Letting God be all meant going to the arrowhead mines every single free Mish Mash with a 11-year-old girl. Don’t worry, guys, we found one on the very last day.

Letting God be all meant really trying to rejoice, even when I was taken out of the game. Sixth session, I spent almost three days bed-ridden in the health center (where one day, I watched Frozen three times in a row. “For the kids,” ya know?). At that time, glorifying God was realizing that He was choosing not to use me in the cabin and then me choosing not to be bitter about it. Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him?

Letting God be all meant staying up a little bit later to have a conversation with a girl who at the beginning of the week said she didn’t believe in God, but at the end of the week, asked me tearfully one night, “Can you tell me His story?”

How crazy is it that we’re all really nothing special; we’re all dead in our sin and wicked at heart (there’s your affirmation for the day), but the God of the universe put us all at Camp War Eagle to show off His splendor this past summer? We all have very different camp stories, but they’re all a part of His story. We’re all merely spotlights, pointing to and showing forth the glory of our Creator. If you’re able, come back to camp! Tell your friends your story and encourage them to interview and apply! The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.

These are just words on a page, and being a counselor is just a job, and life itself is just merely existence without the breath of the living God flowing through it. We can plan to have fun at camp. We can plan to make friends. We can even plan to have some sort of impact on at least a few of the thousands of campers that come through the gates every summer.  But what if we stopped for a second and realized how utterly incredible it is that Jesus includes us in His redemption story? Come, let’s keep shining His marvelous light into darkness.   

           

“However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.” –Acts 20:24

Come back to camp. Leave your planner at home. Live in your brokenness. Invite others to join the journey. Rejoice in the goodness of the Lord. For He alone is worthy.

- Rachel Ford