Center Lake Bible Camp, part one

So, for those of who you know little about it, I'm going to start sharing my camp history with you since it's had such a big impact on my life. I found Center Lake through my church, Calvary Baptist of Webberville, about when I started high school. I went the next two summers for a week each with my friends Matt and Jon, and it was amazing! I'd never been to a camp before, or away from my family and with just my friends for that long. Center Lake had so many fun things to do, and it was out in the wilderness, just where I like to be. The counselors that I had were really cool too; one of the cool things they did was sitting each of us down and having a talk with us about our lives and how we were doing with God at the time (which I later found out as staff that they are required to do, ha!). That always got me thinking about God more, which was a very good thing at that time.

During my second summer there, Jon started talking about working there next summer as an SMT, which stands for Summer Missions Team. We talked to one of the SMTs, Kiel Hamlet, about it, and it got both of us really interested. After we left and had been home for a while, we decided that we were going to apply for it. That winter, I filled out my application and sent it in, and in the spring I found out that I was accepted into the program (this was during my junior year, by the way)! However, Jon didn't get in, because he sent his application in too late, and I was going there for the summer mostly by myself, other than some friends that I had met at camp the previous summer.

At the beginnng, the SMT coordinator, Bri Simpkins, got all the SMTs together for a campfire, and we discussed our goals for the summer. I don't remember what mine was exactly, but I think it had to do with getting a lot closer to God over the summer.

After the camp season officially started, I found out that SMTs did a LOT of stuff around camp...and it was a volunteer position, so we didn't really get paid for it. Over the course of the summer, the SMTs would get to do a little bit of every other job that exists at camp: kitchen work, maintenance, housekeeping, and even a bit of counseling. It was a pretty fun summer overall. Near the very end of it, Bri sat us all down again and we discussed our goals at the beginning of the summer and if we had reached them. The sad part is, I was pretty much the only one who could honestly say that I hadn't really reached my goal, and that I hadn't even put much effort into accomplishing it. I was about the same leaving as I was when I had come. Realizing this was kind of rough. We used an analogy to describe this during the summer, and I found that it applied very well to myself: It's like a gas station. You can pull into somewhere where you can be filled, but if you just expect it to happen by itself, you're in for a surprise. If you're not making an effort to seek God out, you won't find Him. That was my lesson for the summmer. I left for my senior year of high school wanting to learn to follow God, which is a good thing to want, by the way.

That's year one in a nutshell. Now, back to the present: I will be reading through the letters of John today. I've been reading through them already, but I would like to spend today going over stuff, because they're really good. Also, I auditioned yesterday for our school play, "Baptist," and I think I am officially "in" as an acoustic guitar player. I'm happy about that, but I need to put some good practice time in for it, since it's coming up in only two weeks.

Hope y'all have a good weekend!