Wow….and now the week is done! Goodbye Oklahoma and thanks for the memories…..

Jen and I before she left staff training...miss you sweet girl. 

Ashley, me, and Laura after ultimate frisbee staff vs. students game

Only some of the amazing goodies that the mom's bought for the staff (the bullet point later on explains more)

Blue Sky in Texas

My gluten free burger complete with Idaho fries all the way in the great state of Texas :D

This past week was my first week of camp with students. God blessed me with 15 fifteen year old ladies. We had times of laughter, tears, hugs, deep questions, eating sugar, volleyball, sweaty high fives after frisbee in the Oklahoma crazy humidity, sharing our hearts, inside jokes, and prayer. My sweet girls blessed me in so many ways that I can’t even describe. God was at work and refining me in both the blessings and challenges. My heart is very happy. If I had a “happiness meter” then it would be passed the highest level. J

One of my favorite parts of this week was seeing how God multiplied my strength when I was absolutely exhausted. After four nights of 5-6 hours of sleep, my energy was zapped, but whenever I remembered to pray for strength, God would grant it to me in abundance. One night when I was going to sleep, I realized that I was scared for the next day because I thought my energy would gone and I couldn’t serve my students. God convicted me and showed me how I lacked trust in his ability to sustain me in any circumstance. The Holy Spirit brought to mind the words of Psalm 3:5, “I lay down and slept. I awoke for the Lord sustains me.” God blew my mind with this truth the next day! 

Here are my bullet points of blessings from this past week:

·         Seeing my girls’ names for the first time the night before camp started and getting to pray for each of them.

·         Eating organic chocolate chews and talking with God

·         Rocking out on the van ride with my team

·         My squeaky bunk bed in my dorm room. My roommate and I nicknamed our beds “momma and papa mouse” because every time we moved in the middle of the night the bed would squeak loudly just like two mice talking to one another . ;)

·         My girls making connections about the truth they were learning in lectures each day

·         Orchard flavored skittles

·         Getting to be in charge of the medical kit for our team. *cough* I think nursing is the right career for me if something as simple as having the med kit makes me stoked. ;)

·         When my girls were willing to honestly share what was on their hearts with me.

·         Doing laundry

·         My dear student who brought a volleyball with her to camp. We played with it so much!

·         “Happy fruit snacks” that my mum sent me from home J

·         Helping to facilitate Mafia for the students. Nate (another staffer from my team) and I were the story tellers and we had these hilarious and terrible German accents to tell the story with. Our theme for the mafia round was “Veggie Tales characters in the grocery store”. We laughed a lot with the students to say the least. J

·         Showers to clean up after long and hot days

·         Frizzy hair and headbands to mask bad hair days

·         Oklahoma stars at night

·         Looking over a sea of 120+ faces in the lecture hall and being able to pick out the faces of each of my awesome fellow staff members among all of the students. My team has encouraged me, challenged me, and made me laugh really really hard.

·         Grading exams at 1:30 a.m. in the morning

·         Sweet notes from my girls as camp came to a close

·         After wrapping up camp, our team went into lobby of the dorm to eat some lunch. We were greeted by two tables spread with food. One table had everything from chocolate covered acia berries to packs of gum for us to take on our van ride to sprite (my favorite pop). Oh…and they also bought me gluten free brownies and made our team homemade cookies and brownies. J After 2 weeks of eating cafeteria food, this gesture truly blessed me. It turns out that some of the moms of the students from camp went out and bought our team all of this stuff to support us and thank us for taking care of their students at camp. I was so blessed that all I wanted to do was start crying.

·         Our team’s van ride to Arizona for our next camp

·         Talking with my family on the phone

·         Going to two new states (New Mexico and Arizona)

·         Southern rain storms

·         Reflecting on all the lessons that God taught me this week. J

It is crazy that I have only been gone for 2 weeks. It feels like I just left yesterday and also that I have been living with this team for years. Funny how that happens. I am just so thankful that I am truly loving this adventure and the opportunity that I have to love on students all over the U.S.

Onward to Arizona!

~Rachel