Lions and Tigers and Bears

Camp number one is over with and I am still trying to recover. Getting 4ish hours of sleep a night combined with three sick campers throughout the week, 20 plus miles of hiking, as well as going to bed with your cabin around 80 degrees and then waking up with it somewhere in the 40s equals a not so healthy Matt. So the sinuses and I are battling it out again this summer. However, camp was a blast!!


This is a picture of Upper Lake near the camp grounds. It was absolutely beautiful. The remarkable thing about Upper Lake is that it is a 7 mile hike from where the bus was parked and all the campers made it to Upper Lake. Which also means they had 7 miles to go to get back to the bus. Now some absolutely amazing things about that. One girl cried for six hours straight on this hike, but still made it. Meanwhile another girl managed to talk the whole entire time during the hike. How either of them had enough oxygen to make the hike, I will never know. Another thing about Upper Lake, it is cold. Which is why we do our Polar Bear Club there, where about 75% of the campers joined this club. I was also a part of the club.

Now you would think that after a 14 mile hike my campers would want to sleep at night, well then you would be wrong. I had one of the loudest cabins in the camp ground and they did not appreciate the fact people need sleep to go on long hikes like this.

We played a game called "The Moose is Ready" on Saturday night and seemed to be a fan favorite. A quick synopsis of the game is that the moose is at the top of the food chain and would call on another animal by doing it "motion." That animal would then respond with its own motion and another animals. The whole point was to become the moose. My favorite motion had to have been the Bald Eagle. Animals ranged from a lion to bear to penguin to frog to cat to worm to egg and at least 30 other creatures.

However, my favorite part of camp had to have been Tiger. Tiger, a.k.a Thalia, and I really connected over camp. She for some reason called me Mr. Hobo (because I was walking in the wilderness, which means I was walking on the main trail by the bathrooms), however the reasons why I was Mr. Hobo kept getting better and better throughout camp.

Tiger and I can't you tell she is so happy :)

Quite possibly the best time at camp came during an impromptu water fight, perhaps water massacre would be a better description. You see a water fight between four adults with five gallon buckets and a bunch of kids with water bottles wasn't really much of a fight. The best part of this was when the campers would come up saying truce or peace and then proceed to squirt you with a water bottle and counselors in turn dumping five gallons of water on them. It was nice to show the kids that we can have fun too.

So now it is back to the daily grind. I have multiple practices and meetings in the evenings this week and also need to prepare for my three talks at the next camp (I am one of the Bible Teachers for the high school camp). Meanwhile I am trying not to sneeze over everything.

It has been strange realizing I have less than three weeks left with these people and that two weeks from tomorrow my parents will leave to come pick me up. It was tough leaving camp when campers were talking about how they can't wait to see me at camp next year knowing I couldn't tell them I would necessarily be back.

Hope all things are going well and I look forward to talking with you when I get back.

Shalom,
Matt