Saturday Week 3!!!

Holy cow - we have officially passed the half way point at camp! We had a great last week - you can tell people are starting to get more familiar with their jobs because they have more time to hang out and so I have more company - leading to a few less blog posts! Sorry I will try to pick it up again this week.

I finally got a pic of kate tonight at the lasagna dinner. Seriously people love to watch her eat! Someone tonight at dinner told me that they could watch her eat all day - and I said I think she would eat all day if we let her!


This is real - not a fake, not trick photography. I think they call them sugar pinecones, I'll have to ask again. They are huge! We will try to bring one home for our Great Papa's cabin if we have room.



Yesterday after the campers left we had some down time and Macy, Raye and Jeyda had a fun game of chase the beach ball.
Ever since the night last week that Macy wore her cowboy boots, we haven't been able to get them off of her! It has become a little bit of amusement for the camp people! This pic is from yesterday when she apparently was worn out from week 2 of camp like everyone else! The campers leave at 1:00 in the afternoon and the next group doesn't come in until 3:00 the next day, so we do get a nice break.
Kate is becoming such a big girl! She is so smiley and fun! I would not have believed it if someone would have told me a few months ago that she would become a very content, fairly easy baby! I'm not even sure when it happened - maybe it's the California air!




We loved getting to watch the Capernaum kids last week. There were so many sweet moments - I was so impressed with how the kids from other places were fairly accepting. I am sure there might have been comments I didn't hear of course, but overall it was fun to watch them be included. One of my favorite pictures from the week was some of the group from Layfette, LA pairing up with the Capernaum kids to "dance" with them at the square dance. It would take at least two of them for each one in a wheelchair, but it was awesome to watch!
This is Macy walking to dinner with Cory, one of the Capernaum campers from last week. Cory had been helping in the dining room for fun all week and this day happened to be his birthday. He told the work crew kids that it was his best birthday ever! At the end of the week, the last thing kids do before they get on the bus is have a say-so (from Psalm 107 - I think - i will double check that back in my room) where it says "let the redeemed of the Lord say so..." If you aren't familiar with YL camp, it is basically a chance for kids to stand up and proclaim their faith in front of everyone - it is really the pay off for the leaders and people working at camp. They ask the kids to simply state their name, where they are from and something along the lines of "This week I gave my life to Jesus". Several kids stood up at say-so, including Cory, and the very last one to go was another Capernaum student. In very broken speech, he stated his name - and I am not even sure what it was because he was diffucult to understand, and then he simply said "Jesus loves me." It took him quite a bit longer to say and it was broken up, but it was beautiful. In Matt's words, "If you had dry eyes, you have no heart." It was so moving and the perfect end to Week 2.
This week we will have a very different flavor to camp as we have at least 3 urban areas, including 80 kids from inner-city Denver. The program team has had to re-think some of their music choices to make it more relevant and we had to analyze all parts of camp to avoid anything that could encourage gang association (e.i. removing bandannas from the camp store and using numbers and no colors for all group activities) I'll keep you updated!