charlie and the moon archives.

“Kaity, how do you join a sorority?”
“Well, you have to pledge.”
“…pledge what?”
“…WELL, you all say the pledge of allegiance, and whoever says it the fastest wins!”

(Sorry this is so long...)
Camp is officially done for me. Got my paycheck, moved out and wont be back until Prom in August. How strange it is to be done.

As weird as it was to transition into camp from Austin and school and life, it is as weird to transition out of the world I have been living in for the last 8 weeks. I think it is such a bummer that I only had time to work first half this summer. Just when I felt like I was starting to really get the hang of it, it was time to leave. Anyway, more on this later, I think.

I have been making a list of all the things I want to write about, so let’s get to it.

Part 1: Week 5 -- “Through the Fire”
Here is the story of my last week of camp. I think I already wrote some of this on here, but let’s just do it all again. Copied straight out of my journal where I have been keeping it for you. 5 pages and I still haven’t written down Friday. Ready, begin:

“This week has been a crash course in leadership, what I need to know for the fall, and what the Lord meant when He told me, “Only I am STRONG” before Singers banquet. It has been a lot, but I LOVE it. My girls are stinkin’ incredible and havev honestly almost brought me to tears more than once.
Sydney went to the health center Sunday night leaving me as senior for the cabin. She spent the night there, doctor on Monday and ended up being sent home, leaving me as senior for good. We also had 2 wranglers who were supposed to be with us, but 1 was in quarantine because of pinkeye. So right off the bat, we are 2 counselors down. I also have to learn the Sky 3 Bible study by Monday afternoon.
So what is the FIRST thing I do as Senior? Stinkin’ LOSE THE RESCUE MEDS for our camper who can randomly go into anaphylactic shock. AWESOME. Leave my cabin with a wrangler so I can go find them. Go back to the cabin to look and find Hannah and Tamara there disinfecting it. So I have to tell them that I am looking for the rescue meds I lost. Sweet. Find them, all good.
Day 2: Tim gets pulled out of Rodeo camp to go back to Sky 1 because counselors are dropping like flies. Hannah, Tamara AND Kevin all get sent home with the flu and I start to wonder if we are ever going to make it out of here alive. Kate gets pulled out of guest reg to be a relief counselor and moves out of H-Hut into cabin 30. We are left with only 3 real counselors for all of rodeo camp, plus a Rodeo Queen that comes to hang out with T.
[camper name] and [camper name] go to the nurse for a splinter and an allergic reaction to sunscreen. Our other wrangler finally gets out of quarantine.
I take off blob.
I am sitting in the staff lounge using the internet and I see Clinton run up on the porch. My brain goes, “he is probably looking for me.” He throws open the door and scans the room. His eyes land on me and he smiles and says, “hey.” He plops down on the couch next to me and tries to catch his breath. He looks at me and says, “one of your girls is hurt.” He doesn’t have details and pretty much tells me to get back to my cabin as soon as possible. I pack up my stuff and literally RUN down to the blob. I turn the corner at the wet willy and see J-Mo, Chris Witt, Jill, Clinton, Malcolm, John Barker and about 6 nurses at the blob. My camper is laying on the ground in the arms of a nurse. I run past all of leadership to Kaity. She says that someone blobbed her and she landed weird possibly breaking a rib or puncturing a lung. Kaity is going to the hospital with her. Sam and Sparky have CMD, so looks like I am on my own.
The rest of my girls are already at jet skis, so I head down to make sure they are okay. I turn back around to the road just in time to see my camper being carried off on a stretcher by the paramedics. Sweet, I’m thinking, “Sydney is going to be so happy she left her cabin with ME and it basically fell apart.” At least we remembered to trade off the rescue meds before Kaity left.
Praise the Lord for Chantel and Kyle Hess who drove jet skis for us- I don’t know what I would have done without them. But apparently one of my girls PEED on Kyle when he was driving them?! My brain was like, “Really? Did that really just happen?!”
After jet skis Sam and Sparky leave for CMD, leaving me with nine campers, a blind girl and a Rodeo Queen turned camp counselor for a day. Not a problem, just a challenge.
So… girls night. But first- dinner. Things go okay, all the girls are taken care of and miss Rodeo Queen is with T. I am still trying to catch my breath from everything as I lead the girls into the lobby after dinner. I look around and see Tyler Rogers and Jolo and think, “praise the LORD! Sky 2 someone who will listen to my day and laugh about it with me.” I go up to him and say, “Tyler, can I please just tell you about my day.” Nothing. “Tyler!” Nothing. Him and his whole cabin (who are all wearing war paint) are seriously just staring me down saying nothing at all. This goes on a little longer and ends with me saying, “you’re seriously not talking to me right now? I’m just going to walk away because I am about to cry.” And I did and I was. We’re talking “tears in my eyes holding them back don’t cry in front of your kids” about to cry. Cool.
I get to girls night to discover that my game plan is all wrong and I have no idea what is going on. OH, and my radio is dead. I go up to Lewisville and say, “did they tell yall that you guys are helping me out tonight?” “Nope.” Awesome.
So we team up as H-Ville. But it’s not really H-Ville-- Sydney, Taylor, Kaity and Whitney are gone, leaving me and Alex with an “H-Ville” full of girlst hat don’t know each other, don’t know about or want to be H-Ville and have no H-Ville vibe or spirit at all. Again, I am fighting tears wishing I was surrounded by the real H-Ville and all that it stands for. (re-copying this, how lame does that sound? I am so dramatic sometimes.) -- or at least Taylor. She is always there for me when my cabin falls apart when I’m in charge.
So Sky 1 and 2 combine for girls night. We start off by playing the game where they give us two dance moves and a song and we have to make up a dance. I’m like, I have a blind camper, this is not going to work. We struggle through that THEN watch a movie. I’m like, perfect.
The rest of the night is a struggle but okay. Kaity and [camper name] get back from the hospital just in time for bed. Somehow the lights go out in cabin 18 with all counselors and campers in their beds safe and accounted for.
Day 3- Wednesday was pretty uneventful-- the calm before the Thursday storm. Nothing of note to mention- rodeo, kidnapping Colt and a fun rug time involving snacks, treats and pride and prejudice. We are starting to think that maybe we have things under control.
Day 4- we wake up and Kaity has a “looming feeling” much like the one she had right before the blob. We arrive at breakfast to discover that Andrew, the last remaining real counselor with the boys, is sick and going to the clinic. Trey has now gone from wrangler to senior in 4 days.
We arrive at the arena and Kaity and I work together to fight off an attack by a brown recluse. We terminate that ticking time bomb and its on to the next thing.
We go up to Café Sky for a break and learn from another counselor that H-Hut is being disbanded next week and possibly for longer. Sydney is going to be the senior of 10-Boom and we have no idea what will happen to Kate and Lauren. I think they are using H-Hut for a boys cabin… We now have to take down all of our decorations and everything.
While at Café Sky, we decide to take [camper name] to the health center because she doesn’t feel good. I take her in and it turns out she has a fever so they decide to keep her and see if she is just overheated. We grab some pop-ices and hang out for a while. I entertain her first by playing a game of “what’s in my counselors backpack,” which proves to be very interesting. Then we have fun drawing random pictures with markers and stickers. They come back in to check her and her fever has gone up. After you legit have a fever, the rule is you have to be fever-free for 48 hours before you can go back to your cabin. Well, since it’s Thursday afternoon and camp ends Saturday morning, they decide to send her home. As I’m walking out of the health center to go back to the cabin and pack her stuff, Trey walks in with [boy camper] who also has a fever. Oh brother.
I go back to the cabin to pack her stuff and the rest of the girls are just getting back for regroup. We keep them all outside and proceed to Clorox wipe the entire cabin. After we get her stuff together, we send Sparky back up to be with her until her mom gets there to pick her up.
After lunch two more of the girls need to go to the nurse. They are fine though and we go on to activities. EXCEPT that there was a little problem and they had to close the lake… (there is a really cool story about the Rockwall that you can read in my next post.)
We go to dinner and things are going well at the moment. The girls are having a dance party to whatever music is playing and I’m reading something that I got out of our box a few minutes earlier. I look up and one of my girls is lying on the floor not moving. (the same one that went to the hospital after the blob). I run over to her and she is seriously lying in a heap on the floor. Turns out she was dancing around and ran into a chair or something (?) and landed on the floor right on her chest (which is what she went to the hospital for in the first place). So we call a code med and the other counselors get all the rest of the kids out of the dining hall. The nurses get there and it takes us about 20 minutes to get her up and walking again. She was fine, didn’t hurt it worse or anything, but it was crazy. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, for one last story about Thursday, please see the “Um… Haley….” part of the next post. J
…this is where my journal entry stops, because frankly I got tired of writing everything down. So I will do Friday from what I remember.
Day 5-- alarm goes off and I hit the snooze, next time I look at it is says 6:27 (we usually wake the girls up at 6:30). My brain goes, “I’m the senior counselor, executive decision, we’re sleeping until 6:45.” And we did.
Since it is the last day of camp, Rope and the wranglers decide to have this huge water fight down at the arena. Well, it starts, and I’m still in the trailer trying to convince T to join in the fun. She doesn’t want to, so I give it up and decide to go have fun with the girls. I’m walking out into the arena and I see Rope with one of my campers and one of the boy campers-- and he does NOT look or sound happy. So I go over and my girl is CRYING and Rope is having a little chit-chat with the boy (by chit-chat, I mean Rope is giving him a “TALKIN’ TO”).
I grab my camper and pull her away from the “talkin’ to” and ask her what happened. YALL-- this boy STRAIGHT UP PUNCHED HER IN THE FACE because she burst a water balloon on her foot. He punched her in the face yall! AND IT LEFT A MARK. This poor girl. MESS.
I think that is really the only thing of note to mention on Friday. It did follow in the fashion of the rest of the week by being abnormally chaotic and crazy, but nothing super ridiculous to write about. AND I’m on page 4 and am tired of writing about this topic.

So the point is: I titled this section “Through the Fire,” because last week we were put through the fire. Sometimes we would step outside and it would FEEL like we were in a fire, but we were also challenge to the max mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually.
At the end of the week counselors present each camper with a “character award,” where we give them an award and talk about all the awesome things we have seen in them that week. The senior counselor also gives the cabin as a whole an award. For this week, I gave the cabin and my co-counselors the “More than Conquerors” award. This comes from a passage in Romans 8 (ps have I TOLD you how much I LOVE Romans…):


That week felt like we were getting everything thrown at us that we could possibly get thrown at us to distract us or take us away from the reason we were at camp. But the girls kept going and kept having fun and our cabin kept “conquering.” I am CONVINCED that NOTHING CAN SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE OF CHRIST… in all these things, we are MORE THAN CONQUERORS through Him who loves us.
The Lord put us as a cabin through the fire, and it was hard and hot and draining. But there is so much to learn from that week and so many things I learned about Him and about myself. He is so faithful (I know I say this a lot, but it’s TRUE) and so much bigger than anything that is going on here. In all these things, we are MORE THAN CONQUERORS through HIM WHO LOVES US. Think about it and be excited.
Side note: I feel like this whole post may be ridiculous to you unless you have actually worked at a camp at some point in your life. I feel like if a “normal” person (normal being some one who has not been at camp for the last 8 weeks) read this you would be like, “so what, you had a crazy week, no big deal.” Which is totally cool, because camp is a totally different mindset. But honestly you guys, it is such a stinkin’ battle. As dramatic as that sounds, it is. To be on all the time, and have energy and serve and sweat and be responsible for however many girls and to be challenged to love them no matter WHAT. A normal week can stretch you thin, so when you get weeks like this past one you seriously wonder how you will get through.
But weeks like this past one have shown me once again how seriously inadequate I am to handle my life. There is NO WAY I can do all this by myself. (And I think too often I try to do it all by myself, which is why He has to keep teaching me this lesson.) I think this will be my biggest problem in the fall when I get busy with school and Singers and a job (hopefully…). So if you’re praying for me (many thanks!), pray that I will continue to let HIM be in control and run things, that I will use HIS strength and not mine. Only HE is strong enough. (In the last post I talked a little bit about that at the end. There is a super cool story that goes along with that, so please ask me about it because I would love to tell you!)
Anyway, I feel like this post has gone on entirely too long. Moral of the story is- take a look at my crazy week, but it’s all good because HE is bigger. I intended to include parts 2 and 3 of my list of things to write about, but those will come in later posts, because I think 5 pages on Word is enough for you to read at one time.
So, if my thoughts weren’t clear or didn’t make sense, ask me because I am so pumped to talk about what the Lord has done this summer. I hope all of you are LOVING this July weather (FIRE) and having fun in those 8am summer classes… oh wait, that’s ME having fun in 8am summer classes. Oh well. J Stay tuned for fun stories and thoughts on coming back to “the real world.” Until then- text or call because I dig it.

Oh, and this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE57VcA8E_M