One Month Reflection
Sorry I haven't updated in awhile, but I thought I'd post my one-month reflection, it's below. I promise I'll write more this week, as the past week was quite the adventure. But now, it's time to get ready for staff meeting and our next set of campers! Only three weeks left, it's hard to believe it's gone so quickly. Happy reading...

Charity Grimes July 1, 2007

Camping Inquiry Program at Amigo Centre- One Month Report

The past month at Amigo for me has been full of joy, stress, laughter, yawns, and new experiences. Working with the other staff and kids has been great. I’ve immensely enjoyed having a cabin of girls each week to mentor, watch out for, and have fun with. A few highlights have been seeing the joy on the kids faces while playing for worship and jumping up and down and laughing with them during silly songs, learning new things with campers about God’s creation, talking and hanging out with the other wonderful staff, and seeing kids grow to feel safe and confident at camp who we know have major struggles in life. One touching moment for me was when one of our campers volunteered to read the scripture one morning in worship. He is 12 and is quite behind in his reading and overall intellectual development. Seeing him feel confident enough at camp to get up and stammer his way through the passage, followed by the sheer joy when he finished and received high fives and compliments from others was incredible. We only have a week with campers, but moments like that, and the opportunity to reach and encourage them spiritually or in other aspects of life has been rewarding. I see God in the faces of these kids. I can only hope that I’ve been as much of a blessing to them as so many of them have been to me.

Although camp has been wonderful, it also hasn’t been without its challenges. Dealing with homesick campers, girl spats, exclusivity, and campers with emotional baggage has definitely been challenging. We work through things together though, and I haven’t had any major unresolved problems.

I wasn’t sure how I would feel about worship this summer, but it has been much more of a blessing than I ever expected. The scripture is the same each week, but the different camp pastors put a bit of a different twist on each story. It’s been refreshing to hear again the simple themes of God’s pure love for us, and feel God’s presence without needing to highly analyze and intellectualize biblical concepts as we do so often at college. Also to hear the stories again and think about them with children has been refreshing, and an attempt to recapture a piece of that childlike innocence when approaching God.

I feel I have definite support from the other staff, and I know I can go to those above me at any time if I have questions or need to talk, and feel comfortable doing so. I’ve been making a good attempt at accomplishing my goals, but I have much less time than for some reason I thought I would have. So my spiritual development goals have been hard to work at regularly, as being with kids 24/7 and getting worn out has made it somewhat difficult to take time for myself to journal or pray.

Overall everything at Amigo is going very well, I’m happy where I am, and have already gotten more out of the summer than I expected. I look forward to many more fun and meaningful times throughout the next month.
Posted at 15:07 #