"The Weekend"

As I look back over the past week, it's hard to remember what we all did; it seems too long ago. On Wednesday half of Kaleo went caving and the other half helped out with S.A.L.T.S. putting the ship to bed. Wednesday was my turn with S.A.L.T.S. so we loaded the van up and headed to their shipyard to give them a hand or two or thirty. We met up with our old sea dogs John the Skipper, Drew the First Mate, and Matt the Boson. After our tales from sea were exchanged Arlan, Chris, Scott, Michelle and I helped fold all the sails and store them. As you can imagine, there are many sails and they are huge and heavy. We worked our muscles pretty well and now we're quite buff. The next day we ran off to some provincial park and found some awesome caves. We played Gollum for a while and then headed to the Nanaimo pool and hung out in the water for a bit. Friday was the day the kids invaded the camp. Qwanoes Juniors Retreat Fall 2007. This was my first taste at counciling here at Qwanoes and it was a blast, but really tiring. My kids admittedly were a bit nuts. This one kid (name withheld) threatened that he would destroy my ipod stereo/alarm clock and that I should sleep with one eye open. The others were a bit behind in their intentions on making my week hell. Throughout the course of the week I found that the one kid who seemed like he was going to be a handful began to soften. The first day he was consistently trying to put me down and punch and hit and disobey me. The final night, he crawled up into my lap during the fireside and almost fell asleep. The first night they were here they were completely rowdy disobedient little brats and we didn't get to bed until 1:30 after an hour and a half of antics. The last night we were sleeping by 11:45 after reading Bible stories. There was no way I would have got through the week if people were not praying for me and giving me hugs because I was completely shot at lunchtime on Saturday. God truly worked in the kids in my cabin. It seemed like they had no foundation of Christianity and no idea on who God was, but by Sunday I was able to share a bit of God's kingdom with them. A crazy week, I would not do it ever again, but I would not trade the experience for anything. One of my dreams came true that weekend: playing "I'm so Happy" with Russ Smith. I have 3 days of homework left to do and not that long to do it. Keep praying for me and sending me cookies!