//EDIT//
Okay, so I haven’t gotten my pictures developed yet, but Eliyah posted a picture of our tribe… so do you mind if I post it, girl?
>> click here
(I’m the gal in the purple shirt)
(did anyone get Sady’s email address? pretty please could I have it?)
//

Camp Yeshua, how do you feel?

I FEEL GOOD! OH! I FEEL SO GOOD! OH OH! I FEEL SO OH I FEEL SO OH I FEEL SO GOOD! OH! OH! OH!!

Couldn’t resist.

So the camp experience really started last Saturday for me, driving out to the Judah’s house to pick up James and Johanna, who we were hosting. It’s a bit awkward at first, when you know the person online but have never met them in real life, but let me tell you, they are such awesome people that the ice pretty much broke when we got home. We ended up gabbing for a while, James showed me some awesome pictures from his trip to Israel (hey, Jimmie Joe, leave me the link? I want to save some of those!), we ate dinner outside and got eaten alive…

And then they showed me the laughing cat.

Okay, so you have to see the cat to understand the joke, so click here. Half the joke is that it looks like my little Tia of course, but my goodness, reports say that I was literally rolling when they showed this to me. I just remember not being able to breathe. Well, it got to the point where all they’d have to do is snort and I’d be off again. Which they did. All week.

Anyhow, we watched independence day and stayed up kind of late, and then I personally did not get to sleep for a few more hours. I was praying for a lot of things: for camp, for certain friendships, for focus, and for certain issues to be resolved. Needless to say, I probably did not fall asleep that night until two or three in the morning.

And then I awoke to overhear plans to sneak into my bedroom and turn on that darn laughing cat.

I need to move on, I haven’t even gotten to camp yet! We got up, doodled around impatiently for a while, had lunch, and then loaded in the Bates’ van with Caleb, Garrison (the guy he was hosting), Tegan, Johanna, Jimmie Joe, and myself.

We made it to camp before the buses and got to meet up with some of the people who were already there, including Ashley, Rachel, and Greg (hi, guys!). Probably about twenty minutes after we got there, the buses pulled in, and that’s when all of the real fun started… all of the hugs and reunions with people you haven’t seen since sukkot or even last year’s camp. And then we all trooped into our dorms/cabins.

I was in Pennington, which is known as the really nice one. Well, downstairs is really nice. All the bunks are in a row, and then along the other wall there are almost these little closet things, where there’s a dresser and a place to put things. My goodness! But there was only room for twenty-four girls in there, so twelve of us got sent upstairs to “upstairs Pennington”. This room was barely big enough for six bunk beds along both walls, not sticking out but against the wall, with just enough room in the middle to walk through. But it was really nice because we had twelve girls and two showers all to ourselves… I swear, the bathroom was bigger than the room itself! I got to stay with Becky and Lisa, two of my most favorite people in the whole world, and I got to meet some awesome girls too. Imagine this: twelve girls in one room, and in these twelve girls there are three Jessicas, two sets of siblings, and a Becca and a Becky. Crazy!

Sunday was an okay day. I mean, it was awesome getting to see Canada again (Jen-less and Allan-less, of course! *sniff*), getting to see other friends from the past two years and all… but because of something that happened over the past year, there was a certain degree of awkwardness that first day… and it had me so tied up in knots that first night that I felt like I was going to pass out during evening worship. I could not focus, I could not think… and I was stuck there in the middle circle while they messed with electric guitars during dance with me.

And of course, starlight dance began that night, which is probably the most awesome experience during camp, at least for me. I mean, it’s one thing to worship in a large multi-purpose garage type building with awesome music, but it’s completely another thing to be out in the middle of nowhere, truly, with His creation all around you and millions of stars in the sky, worshipping there in the dark where you don’t care what you look like, who’s looking at you, and what steps you get or mess up. It’s just you and Him that night.

That night, in the cabin, after we got girls calmed down and lights out, I layed in bed forever, once again, just praying and trying to figure things out. I mean, if I’m feeling physically sick in the middle of evening worship, then my focus is NOT where it should be. And that’s something I’ve been learning since about December… where your focus needs to be and why you need to keep it there. More specifically, my focus as an eighteen year old girl should not be on this guy or that, but on Him, “my love, my fair one”. Focus was the word of the week for me, because even though I learned this past year about where and when to keep my focus, it really was put to the test this week at camp. And I admit, I failed sunday night, and I knew it. And so I prayed about it again and finally went to sleep.

The next morning at breakfast, it began to resolve itself, and I will tell you now that by the end of the week two things had happened, in my opinion. One, that a broken friendship had been restored, and two, that I became the most focused on Him than I have ever been in my life.

Encounter time in the morning was incredible. Basically, we met in the (west?) chapel in the morning, said some traditional prayers, had a few words from Bill, and then had fifteen to twenty minutes just to spend with you and the Lord. It’s a great way to start the morning, and it’s really inspired me to keep it up for the rest of the year.

After encounter time, we had our tribal conferences. Okay, let me back up for you non-campers. We had enough kids this year to split into twelve groups of thirteen to sixteen, and so they were the twelve tribes of Israel. Also, there were four “camps”, depending on where the tribes were camped around the tabernacle in the wilderness. I was part of Simeon, also known as Cinnamon, and then part of the camp of Reuben (Hill! Remember VBS, when you and I totally lead Reuben? Yess!). Red armbands for us. So every morning our group met on the rocks overlooking the entire valley and had some sort of group discussion. Mr. Frostad was our tribe leader, and he is just an awesome guy (eh?). We had some great group discussions about becoming One in Messiah (the theme of this year’s camp), one with our future spouse, the cost of following Him, et cetera and so forth.

Each tribe also had a plain canvas banner and a bunch of acrylic paint, and we had to come up with a banner for our tribe. Simeon’s was not too bad. We had the city of Shechem in the middle of ours, with a wall around the outside and a menorah made of hebrew letters at the top. Okay, I will post pictures, I promise!. But the best part was Luke’s stick guy. He should have won it for us!

Lunch came and went, and then we usually had some sort of recreation time, playing Brentball, swimming, or whatever. I think the best part of the afternoon were the sessions you signed up for. All three days I went to Ann’s advanced dance class. I had wanted to get some teachings in because I’m HERE now, I can dance whenever I want… but I was having a lot of back problems this week, so sitting somewhere in the heat on a wooden bench learning Hebrew just didn’t measure up to the possibility of some awesome worship time. Worshipping Him totally makes me forget about all of the aches and pains, as it should. The second day of advanced dance, Ann put on Paul Wilbur’s “Adonai”… and if you have access to that song, put it on. It gives you goosebumps, it’s such an incredible worship song. But Ann really felt let to put it on at the end of class that day because she and Stephanie had the verses choreographed, but not the chorus and the part at the end.

So she put it on for us, and it really is such an amazing song. We listened through, and I was in the corner with my eyes closed, just listening. I didn’t even know at that point what Ann already had for the verse, but every time the chorus came through… well, the weirdest thing happened. It wasn’t like I was *seeing* anything, per se, but I honestly was either seeing or feeling a certain thing when the chorus was on. And I had steps to it then, and I truly believe that He gave them to me and that, for the first time, I was open enough that day to actually hear His words. And after we spent about fifteen minutes doodling around with what to do with the chorus, with nothing truly feeling right, I finally got up the nerve to show Ann… and we tried it once through and it just… fit. And so that was the dance you were all doing out under the stars from that night on. I truly believe that, like dance with me, that song was choreographed by Him alone, and I was so excited to be a part of that!

Dinner, like lunch, came and went, and then we all trooped down to the Tabernacle for evening services. Our worship leader who was supposed to be out this week lives in Florida, and when his house got hit by the hurricane, he couldn’t make it to Oklahoma. We had Rod and the team two nights, Brad Scott another night… but I am really so proud of my fellow campers, because on Wednesday night, they totally pulled together with a bunch of people they had never met before and we had an awesome time of worship that night. I wasn’t even aware of all the frustration involved with that until I read James’ site this morning, and… wow, I just can’t believe how well that all pulled together.

We had a teaching, of course, some of which stood out more than the others. I have three favorites, honestly. I absolutely LOVED the object lesson that Bill gave with the baseball game and the ticket that Yeshua has given to us… and I also really loved Monte’s description about how your body, heart, soul, spirit, and might all work together to form one body. Who couldn’t love those five guys up there totally being the crazy, awesome people they are?

And I think my favorite, honestly, was Brad Scott’s personality teaching. I had never heard it taught that way before. I mean, I’ve done personality tests before and never had them really turn out right. (By the way, I’ve been all over Brad’s website and can’t find the actual test, so if someone knows what the www is…). Anyhow, I found this quite interesting and it told me a lot about myself and others. Here’s just a quick rundown, in case you find this as interesting as I do:

Sanguine: forgetful, enthusiastic, lives for the moment, extrovert, outgoing, etc
Choleric: leader, perfectionist, everything has to be in order, controlling, etc
Phlegmatic: doesn’t care, introvert… well, just doesn’t care
Melancholic: “you have a headache? I have CANCER.” (which is totally now my new response to “I have a headache”… “I have CANCER”…)

Sanguines should marry Melancholics and Cholerics should marry Phlegmatics, which makes perfect sense. I haven’t taken the actual test online because I can’t find the www, but I’ve decided that I’m mostly melancholic (which is more than having cancer, it’s also that we worry a lot about things that don’t end up happening, we’re introverted, we have musical talent (pfff), we like to study, etc), with a little bit of sanguine. And so I have to marry someone who’s mostly sanguine but who can be melancholic. It’s funny, but those are the kinds of people I look for anyway!!

Enough about that.

So that’s the basic outline of every day, and there are some events that really stood out to me, some of which I already mentioned. First I have to tell you about our act for talent night. Have any of you heard Nicole C. Mullen’s “Freedom”? (Hill! Freedom!) Well, just a few days before camp I was messing around with choreography in the driveway… had some basics together but no chorus, nothing for this verse or that, etc. Well, I kind of decided midway through camp, I believe it was Wednesday, during signups for talent night, which only had limited spots, to turn on the music and just show Lisa what I had so far. Well, she helped me with the rest of the choreography process (and she says she doesn’t do that… pfff…), and before I knew it, we had six people total who were going to be in the dance: Tegan, Caleb, Lisa, Becky, Robby and I. Tegan had seen me mess around with choreography, Lisa had seen it but hadn’t really tried it yet, Caleb and Becky had heard the song but hadn’t seen the dance, and Robby hadn’t even heard the song before. We ended up signing up as first alternate, in case someone dropped out. As of lunchtime Thursday, I was the only one certain of the dance. While everyone was on the slip-n-slide that day, we met in Pennington Lodge and I taught the dance. And the five people who picked it up so fast, I hope He blesses your socks off for that!!

We had to meet over in the dining hall to confirm being in talent night and bring any CD’s we needed over to Bill… and it was the same little chunk of free time we had to get all nice for dress-up night. On the way down, we met Jill, who was supposed to play the piano but didn’t feel prepared for it and really just wanted to go get ready for that night, so she told us to tell Bill to just scratch her name off. As first alternate, we couldn’t agree more. Well, we talked to Bill and he said that we were still alternate, because we were limited as to time and many people didn’t know exactly how long their skits were. If there was time, he said, we’d be the second to last act.

You know what? There was time!

And so we totally got up in front of everyone after learning the dance just a few hours before, and we did FREEDOM! With minimal mess-ups! Lin said that she got two pieces of the dance on her camera, so maybe they’ll be out with the camp CD, but I do know that Cassandra got all of our dance on HER camera… so I’ll work on getting it from her and then finding somewhere to upload it online so you all can see it. I am so proud of it, first of all, and proud that I didn’t get stage fright. Instead, I totally turned into a sanguine and got INTO it!

The other big big event was Thursday night after the starlight dance. Usually we end out on “Dance with Me” and split up quietly into our tribes so that we can end the night in prayer and go to bed. However, Thursday night, everyone just kind of gathered into the middle of the field, almost as if it was a giant group hug. And people started singing “Hallelujah” over and over again, and it was just so beautiful. Guys, I seriously can’t even begin to describe it… those that were there know how that is… but it was just one of those total and complete GOD moments that you’ll remember for as long as you live. Everyone had their arms around everyone, and people were singing, crying, praying… I remember crying at the beautifulness and the ONEness of it all, like we truly had become ONE IN MESSIAH that night… I remember just looking up at the stars and feeling closer to Him than I have in such a long time… and then I remember being so filled with joy that I just wanted to hug everyone all at once, wanted to jump up and down praising Him will all of my everything… and then it was all over and it was getting close to two in the morning. I will never be able to to describe it, but because of that night I feel as if I am on fire for Him once again, ready to live for him every day.

As soon as I get my pictures developed I’ll get them up here, and I have some pictures I took for other people so I’ll have them here too.

WHAT A WONDERFUL WEEK!

//EDIT//
I just started a Camp Yeshua blogring (oooh, aren’t I cool? Not.) Please join if you were there and invite anyone else you know that was there, please oh please! I personally didn’t get a lot of addresses this year at camp, so let’s try to get as many people in this as we can, okay?