Camp is transformative.
I go to camp as an adult leader each year, not because I love not sleeping for a week, or that the food is so amazing, or even that I enjoy supervising middle and high school students on a 4-hour bus ride. No – those are reasons NOT to go to camp.
As an adult, those reasons seem to leap up first when first considering going to camp. However, it is the other things about camp that keep me coming back year after year. It’s the pure worship that students express day after day, and the honest conversations that happen in cabins that attract me. It’s the life-changing events like students committing their life to Christ or deciding that now is the time to be baptized. It’s the whole body surrender that students engage in that reminds me that God’s Spirit is at work. That spiritual work is what keeps me coming back. I get to witness (and occasionally be part of) God working in the lives of young people, and calling them to serve Him, and I get to see students obey His voice!
I want to be a part of students being called, as a group, to God. So, I will put up with the other stuff because in the end, it’s about God’s will being done.
I can’t wait.