Camp Week

Sunday will start my favorite part of the summer. I absolutely love camp. It was at a camp in Cisco, Texas in 1993 where I first experienced the love of Christ in a real and powerful way. That week I knew for the first time in my life without a doubt that He loved me and that I had a role in His kingdom. It changed my life forever. In 1994 I went to the same camp session but at a different campground. It was Camp Pettijohn in Oklahoma. That summer I met this good friend named Nancy. Fifteen years later we are engaged. When they say you may meet your future spouse, they are telling the truth. I went to Pettijohn every summer because of the wonderful friends I had made. I was challenged and grew each year. Even though I lived in Tennessee, several of us from the Martin congregation found a way to go to camp in Oklahoma. When I was 17, I drove myself and my friend J.R. My mom let me because she knew how good it was for me and that was the only way I was gonna get there.
In California I was able to be a part of Sierra Bible Camp. It was a wonderful place to be, with God’s people surrounded by God’s beautiful mountains. The last summer I was there, when my nieces Ashley and Tara were able to join us, it even snowed on us for 30 minutes. That was a rare thing for a stormy cold front to move through in June. Usually it was in the 80s for camp if you were wondering. We were only 6,000 ft. up. But even that cold week hearts were warmed by the love Christ.
Now I am looking forward to Western Kentucky Youth Camp. Again, I am privileged to be a part of a great camp session. The directors and staff do a terrific job conducting a spiritually challenging and uplifting week filled with fun and faith building. For a week I have no worries, no concerns, and I just get to enjoy learning about Christ and hanging out with kids. I am dead tired at the end of the week, but it is completely worth it.
Camp is one of the most important faith building events that teens experience. It helped shape my faith in profound ways, and I have some of the best memories of my life from my camp experiences. I never remember the heat, or the fatigue, or the late nights trying to get kids to stop talking and sleep (actually, I sleep pretty well through that). Just ask teens from my youth groups about camp and they will have all kinds of funny, amusing, and uplifting stories. This year will be sentimental because it may be my last camp with the Parkway kids, and also because Nancy is going to be a counselor, and I haven’t been able to be at camp with her since our senior year of high school.
Please be in prayer for camp this week. Pray that God will move in our hearts and change us deeply and profoundly. Pray that it will be spiritually dangerous, because it will bring us to grow and move and take faith risks.

Yea, Camp!