Jul

22

Young Teen Week

Filed Under News 

See new pictures in the gallery from the fire and from the two teen weeks.

Before I get to this week of camp I’ll give my version of last week of camp. We had 29 teen campers. It was a small week, but that ended up being a blessing. As Andrew said before, camp began with 8 staff members getting sick on Monday night. I was one of them. It was pretty miserable. Ben, a boy counselor, was so sick that his cabin was divided between the other two boys cabins. Everyone got sick to different degrees. A few got sick once or twice in the night and then were fine. Others of us had it worse. Ben was the sickest; he had a high fever and was sick longer. I stayed in bed most of Tuesday. Wednesday I was feeling better, but I didn’t have a lot of energy.

After lunch we noticed some smoke so Mr. Dean called it in. I went to take a nap. When I got up an hour later the smoke column was huge and angry-looking. At 3:30 the forest service asked us to evacuate. It wasn’t mandatory, but the fire people were nervous to have so many people up at camp. The campers got showered and packed and by 5pm we loaded vehicles and left. Because it was a small week we were able to fit all the campers in the two 15 passenger vans. Once in town we went to Mrs. Mason’s (whose husband donated the camp land) for a cookout and volleyball. Then we went to the church and had a service. We spent the night in the church—the girls in the auditorium, the boys in the back rooms, and Andrew and Mr. Dean in the hallway. We were hoping to go back to camp in the morning, but the fire was still pretty bad. We made calls to the campers’ parents and had another service. Rides for the campers started arriving around lunchtime, and by supper all but one camper was gone. Mr. Dean wanted to take the staff back to camp. I wasn’t very excited about going back so close to the fire, but we didn’t have a choice. Thankfully, as we traveled back, camp was getting a huge storm. It rained 1 ½ inches in about an hour. It was the first substantial rain since our first day at camp. God sent it at the right time. When we got to camp the fire was mostly out in the danger area for camp.

We were able to have a full week of camp this week! It was a big group with 55 campers and an 18-person work group. Matthew had the biggest cabin: 10 campers. Things seemed to go pretty well. We had some rain Monday night, and Tuesday it rained almost all day. Actually, from Thursday (of the previous week) until Wednesday of this week it rained at least a little bit every day. I have never seen it do that during the summers I’ve been here. Tuesday’s rain caused some schedule changes, but no one seemed to mind.

During Young Teen week we do a Mystery Meal. The campers get a list of items that are correspond to necessary supper items, and they have to write down in sections of 4 what items they want. The counselors then serve them their food. Some of them get some food without utensils, and the best is when they order their drink before their cup. Then the counselor gets to pour some in their mouths. The kids love it, and so does the staff.

There has been a moose around camp. During Teen Week it was in the clear cut and had a baby with her. This week she was in the meadow. Andrew went through the woods to get closer pictures of her. The baby was in the woods, so he got to see her too. Apparently Saturday morning around 6am the moose and baby were on the volleyball court and the basketball court and later it was seen several times close to camp. I still haven’t seen the baby, but I hope I will soon.

Saturday was also Matthew’s birthday. Friday night I made a cake and we put up some decorations. At lunch we sang happy birthday and gave him a few gifts.

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