Week 4!

I've decided that I'm going to break this all up and give each week it's own entry. It seems a little silly since all these weeks are long past, but it help me keep my thoughts straight and is doubtless easier for you all to read. So, Week 4. Week 4 was special, because that week I had Joe's home youth group, including his parents. Joe is our camp director, and his parents are amazing. His dad, Mark, works for Teameffort and had just returned from working at our camp in Puerto Rico. He's a total beast, knew exactly how to do everything perfectly, how to explain it to the kids, and how to have fun doing it. Plus, this guy is absolutely hilarious. Seriously. So much fun. He was just a chaperone and not the actual youth leader, but all their adults were like him, and the kids were great too. It was so refreshing to have a group that understood exactly what we're about and whose attitudes were so perfectly balanced between focused work and fun with the kids. They practically worked on autopilot. I was still at Sweet T's house with Matt that week, and I'm glad I wasn't alone there because they were so good that they didn't really need us so it was nice to have some company. When I was bored though, there were always the kids. Their chaperones included a married couple who brought their children, a girl named Amelia who was about three and a boy whose name I am sad to admit I can't remember, who was about 4. They were precious and always kept things interesting. Emily was at a worksite across the street, and one day we spent most of the afternoon running back and forth across the street pretending we were spies, looking for I don't know what or why, but it was fun. It was nice to be a kid again, and to remember how to use my imagination, pretending it was a dark and stormy night and we were deep into a terrifying enemy territory. We should all use our imaginations more. We really don't give them enough credit.

I also want to talk about Joe's mom, Carla, because I want to be her when I grow up. She is absolutely the sweetest woman I have ever met in my entire life. To begin with, she brought homemade blondies for Joe and Caitlin and a box of Sundrop soda, because it's Joe's favorite. Every morning at breakfast she came and found me, said good morning and gave me a hug. She did the same thing every night. She was always so sweet and kind and motherly to everyone. I wonder what it would have been like to grow up with her. I refer to her as Mommy Carla in my head. I want to be her when I grow up.

Where Do I Even Begin?

Seriously. So much has happened this summer! I don't know where to begin, or where to end, or what to put in the middle for that matter. Prepare yourself for a very eclectic and poorly organized post.

I guess I'll start with Week 3, seeing as that's where I left off. Week 3 I had the great joy of working with my dear Matthew Thomas at Theresa and Tyrone's house. They're a married couple about the same age as my mom, with children all grown up and a young grandson who hung out with us that week and wrote messy love letters to one of the high school girls who was there that week. They are such a precious family. Theresa is universally known as Sweet T, a name which she more than lives up to. She calls us all her children, and has been very sad to say goodbye to each group as they leave every week. She kept inviting us in just to sit in the air conditioning and was so kindly insistent that sometimes she actually made it hard to keep the campers outside working. I LOVE being at Sweet T's house, or just around it, because she is so appreciative of what we've done for her that she never fails to remind me why I'm doing this. The homeowners are another face of why I'm here, but unlike the campers, who are always around, it's easy for me to forget how much our presence here means to them, and I am grateful to Sweet T for always reminding me of what a blessing it is to be able to plant flowers for someone who loves them. Also, that Wednesday was Tyrone's birthday and we had a party! Well, Sweet T had a party, and invited all of us! But she told Tyrone that the lunch was just for all of us as a thank you for all of the work we were doing, so we got to watch him run around all day setting up his own birthday lunch! It was quite funny, and led to my favorite part of that week, which was watching Casey, my 17 year old camper, literally pull a table out of Tyrone's hands because she didn't think he should have to do any work on his birthday. He gave up because she threatened to fight him. Casey's younger brother George was there too. I say younger because he was certainly not little. Though two years younger than her, he was over a foot taller, coming in at about 6'5'' and close to 200 pounds. I liked him though, because he was one of those gentle giants. He was big and strong and kinda scary looking, but he was all sweetness and fun, and got a huge kick out of jumping on the low end of a piece of plywood balanced on a bag of quickcrete and bouncing me into the air. On Thursday night Casey came up to me and told me that George had called their mom that day and asked her to start taking them to church. I admire that so much, because seriously asking my mom to take me to church is something I never had the courage to do. It's the little things like that that make the summer for me.

Salut Mes Cheries

I'm sorry it has been so long since I've updated about my summer. God is teaching me so many wonderful things. I know I'm already a different person than I was going into this summer, and I hope that feeling will last long after I leave Myrtle Beach. A post is coming soon, I promise.

An Entry from My Journal on the 4th of July

I feel like it is necessary for me to evaluate my attitude towards America. I appreciate my freedom, but at the same time I feel like I take it for granted simply because I've never lived in an oppressive country. However, there is nothing I can really do about that at the moment. It is more my attitude towards the culture and politics of America that I feel I need to check, because it is largely one of disgust. I am disgusted with the promiscuity, ignorance, arrogance, greed, materialism, consumerism, and self absorbtion, all accompanied by intolerance and a gross superiority complex. We are like ignorant children who think they are grown. These are all legitimate complaints, but I feel that my attitude is completely lacking in love. With people my attitude is "love the sinner, hate the sin", and my attitude towards America needs more of that, more love and mercy and even pity for all the people who don't see where it's all going wrong.

Flags on an alter

I must work through my feelings about America and the 4th of July. We went to church yesterday and the front of the church was covered with banners and American flags. We only sang two songs that had nothing to do with America or freedom, and one of them pictured a flowing American flag in the background of words all about "carrying the light", making me wonder if we were talking about Jesus or democracy. The rest of the songs were old hymnals about freedom and the beauty of America. In situations like that I have to wonder what it is exactly that we're worshipping.
Patriotism has its place, but it's not in the church. I think extreme patriotism in the church is dangerous, because it can trick us into thinking that the answer to our problems lies in the political system. It is important to appreciate the freedom we have to worship out in the open and do things like chapel services on the beach, but it is also necessary to remember that freedom is not the answer to the world's problems and that Christ grants us the ultimate freedom no matter what country you're living in (which is of course so easy for me to say as I write this from the Christian camp I work at in America, but it's the only perspective I've got). When this is forgotten we hear things like sermons quoting Abraham Lincoln's "Freedom is the final and lasting hope of the world," or something to that affect. This attitude scares me, because our hope is not in political freedom, it is in Jesus, and we must ask ourselves in which of these we are putting our hope, and which of these we are worshipping every Fourth of July when we drape flags over the alters of our churches.
Another thing I take issue with is the sentiment that God has "chosen" America and/or the American church and ordained them to make the world a better place. It comes from the idea that the founding fathers were Christians who depended on God for guidance in creating our government and country, which they were not, and the idea that God gave us victory, which may or may not be true and is an entirely different matter, but I am disinclined to believe that God would take sides in his children slaughtering each other over economic differences. I disagree with the "God bless America" attitude politically because that's what gives us the arrogance to think that we have the best ways of doing things and it is our duty to share our blessed ways with other countries, but I'm just going to stop that tirade there. Again, that's a whole other matter. However, I find this attitude even more reprehensible when it's within the church, because the church is held to a higher standard and should just know better. Jesus did not create two churches, the American church and everybody else, and while Israel was a chosen people I do not believe that God has favorites, and I feel that asking God to bless America comes with the silent implication that God would bless us over everybody else, that we are somehow superior to all His other children in His sight so that He would chose to bless America specifically. We are all equal in God's sight. Both nationally and individually, we have all turned from Him. There is no "Christian nation", including America, but we are all equally beloved by Him despite our uniform unfaithfulness. We are all dear creations of God, and we are unified as His children. God created Americans, Afghanis, Chinese, Rwandans, Germans, French, Mexicans, and everyone from the many countries I can't fit here, so God bless everybody.

We went to a shopping center the other day that reminded me of Atlantic Station

And then we went to a park that reminded me of Atlanta. Homesickness is starting to hit me. I miss the faces of my friends, of hearing all their voices at once, with a million conversations going on at once like we always do. I miss hugs and late night froyo runs and driving home at 1 am. I even miss my family. Kinda. I miss the familiar places, and I'm kind of sad that I won't even have time to enjoy them when I am home, because I'll just be getting ready to leave again.

Camp! Weeks 1 and 2

The last three weeks have been so fantastic, but of course not without their share of rough moments. I'm going to try to give a brief recap of the last three weeks without making this entry too too long, with the hopes of making time to write about each week as they happen in the future.

So, Week 1 I was at Tomasina's house by myself with a group of 11, 8 high school girls, one brave high school boy, and two chaperones, Buddy and Jill. That week we were scrubbing, priming, and painting her house, which seemed like a relatively futile place to start seeing as her house is in such serious disrepair, but it was an easy place to start and since I have such limited construction experience and there were everyone else's worksites to plan as well we just started there. I was nervous about being in charge of a worksite by myself, but I quickly realized that, while making sure everyone is doing what they need to do, doing it right, has what they need, are drinking water, not miserable, and figuring out what to get them working on after that is not always an easy task, it's nothing to be scared of and not as hard as I thought after I developed the confidence to make decisions without a second opinion. The girls were a little quiet but very sweet, and they opened up more as the week went on. They were a little shy with me, but I had a great time watching them laugh and bond as a group throughout the week, especially after Caitlin (one of my camp directors) told me that Buddy, their youth pastor, had only taken up the position the previous week, when their original youth paster was deployed to Iraq. It was their first anything together, and by the end of the week they are laughing and joking together. One of my chief joys of that week was watching the relationships strengthen and bonds from within that small group.
As I said though, no week is without its share of trials, and in this case it was the house itself. Tomasina's house is a very frustrating case, because it's in terrible condition, but there are a lot of things we just can't fix. For example: the aluminum siding on her trailer is torn up and peeling back around many of the edges, but as a rule Teameffort doesn't work with metal like that because the edges are so sharp they'll cut you at the slightest slip up, and when middle schoolers and high schoolers are doing most of the work slip ups are inevitable, so all we could do was put a new coat of paint around the holes. Also, we are still at a loss for a solution for the roof (if you have no idea what I'm talking about, go back an entry or two and read about Tomasina's roof). Joe mentioned to me last week that he had some harebrained idea, but it was too complicated to explain to me so he we going to try to explain it to Glenn, our contractor, and see what he thought. That was the last I heard of it, but Joe did tell me the other day that he has another concern. Tomasina's house is located along a popular shortcut to city hall, so if we do anything too crazy it will be noticed and we'll run the risk of being shut down. Dwarfing this, however, is the fact that if any city officials do come out to inspect what we're doing, even if our work meets all their requirements and codes, her house is in such a state that it's likely to be condemned if anyone looks to closely, so in trying to repair her house we could actually get her kicked out of it. This is quite a conundrum, and we still have not even a shadow of a solution, but there are still 5 weeks left in the summer so the fight is not over yet!

On to Week 2! I hope you're not tired of reading yet. Last week I was working with Natalia at the Waccamaw Youth Center, a home for boys who have been abused and abandoned. It can house up to about 15 boys age 8-21, though I'm not sure how many are currently living there. I only met three of them Robert, an extremely sweet teenager who I joked with about his failure to water the plants, Nico, who was quieter than Robert but still friendly, and was often on the computer in the rec room where we went to cool off, and C.J., who brought us all tootsie pops on Thursday and worked alongside the group that was there this past week. It's run by this fantastic man named Mike, who provided us all with apple juice and ice cream and reminded me to wear sunscreen when my face was looking pink. I loved talking to Mike. He is such a sweet man and was so overwhelmingly excited and grateful that we were there that it was impossible to leave a conversation with him without a warm fuzzy feeling in my heart. There is a lot of work to do at Waccamaw, because it's a big place and in a house full on teenage boys things get broken regularly, and we started by repairing, scraping, scrubbing, and priming the four decks attached to the main house. I seem to be doing a lot of painting. But as much as I love Waccamaw and the people there, what made that week so memorable was the kids. Believe it or not, I started out the week feeling bored and a little fidgety. As much as Myrtle Beach is different from Tampa, the structure of the day and the way we do things are so much the same that I found myself tired already of hearing the same nightly talks, the same messages, answering the same questions. I don't know exactly why, but I could see the summer panning out before me with each week looking exactly like the one that had just passed, and exactly like last summer as well. I got so caught up in the work aspects of the week that I forgot about what made it interesting and why I'm here. And boy did these kids remind me! Natalia and I had two groups, one of all middle schoolers from Massanutten Presbyterian Church in Virginia and one of mostly high schoolers from Central UMC in North Carolina, totaling 28 people on our worksite, and man were these kids awesome! I don't really know how to begin to describe them. When I was told we would have a group of all middle schoolers, I groaned in anticipation of a bunch of kids with bad attitudes, too worried about being cool to have any fun with (that's what my middle school group was like last summer), but the kids from Massanutten were the exact opposites. They had great attitudes. They spent the first day and a half on the worksite scraping paint off the porches with hardly any complaint. They were goofy and fun, and we just clicked. It was so hot on Tuesday that three of the girls did a rain dance in hope of summoning some rain to cool us down, and twenty minutes later we had to leave the worksite because there was a storm coming! I learned from their leaders (who were also incredibly sweet and great with the kids) that almost all of them had gone to preschool together and been friends their entire lives, and their relationships made for lots of silliness among themselves that I had the pleasure of witnessing, because they weren't afraid of being goofy around each other. And speaking of relationships, so many new ones formed that week! I wasn't sure what it would be like having two different groups on a worksite. I expected that they would get along well enough, but that everyone would spend most of their time with the people they already knew, but in hopes of encouraging some integration, Monday morning I had everyone go around and say their names, not expecting that everyone would even remember half of them, and expecting even less that by the end of the week they would know all of them and that these two groups would be so close they would all have each other's phone numbers and would be planning to meet up for a group ski trip, which is what actually happened. I can't describe to you how amazing it was to watch those relationships form. One of my favorite moments of the week, and undoubtedly a favorite memory of the summer, was sitting on the beach during our closing program and being able to watch Tim, a chaperone from Virginia, told Dylan, a high schooler from North Carolina, what a great man he was growing into and how proud he was of him. Another of these memories is when Jonny, an eighth grader with the Massanutten group, plopped down next to me on the beach, smiled at me and just said, "Thanks", to which I responded with a simple "You're welcome". We sat there in silence for a few minutes, just looking at the ocean, but after a few minutes I noticed that he was crying. I asked him what was wrong and if he wanted to talk about it, to which he just shook his head and said,"I'm just happy". Bam. I think that is perhaps my favorite memory of all, including last summer. People often cry during the closing program, but I know that for a lot of them whatever made them cry that night will be forgotten as soon as they go home and nothing will change in their lives, but the happiness that comes from encountering God is not something anyone forgets, because why would you want to forget joy like that? I feel like I'm not doing a good job of portraying the strength of these moments or the effect these crazy kids had on me. They reminded me what it is I'm doing here, made me laugh like nothing else and smile till my face hurt and forget how tired I already am of eating the same stupid meals every week. I missed them the minute they pulled out of the parking lot at 7am, which would have been a much longer goodbye had we not all been so tired from getting up at 5:30 to watch the sunrise on the beach together. Beautiful. Really it was just Massanutten that left that early, but Central got up two hours before their scheduled breakfast time to watch the sunrise with them and see them off. All of these kids touched my heart, and I regret my inability to capture them in words, and that lack of space I have (I'm trying not to make this too too long. I try!) to tell you about Big Mama, Heather and Devan, twins with personalities as opposite as their fire red and dark brown hair, Bossman Tim and the lovely Alana, who I always referred to as Mother Alana in my head because she really is mother to everyone around her. I wish I had time and space to tell you about all of these things, but I've already decided that Week 3 will have to wait for another post out of sympathy for your attention span, and I think Week 2 will end hear. If you would like to hear more, comment, call, or whatnot. I look forward to more memories to tell you <3

So little time!!!

I'm so busy, but so much has happened! I'm loving camp and the last three weeks have been AMAZING!! I am frustrated that I don't have time to tell you all about it right now, but I promise I'll get a blog up either tomorrow or Saturday. I look forward to telling you all about everything!