Daughters of the King

session one girls camp 2012. wow.
This is one of those times where I wish I could take you on a journey into what I have experienced this past week because I know that no matter how well I articulate, I will never be able to accurately describe what this week has been like...
I had 5 girls between 14 and 16 years old and they were so great, beautiful young women who I am so blessed to have got to spend the week with. I could feel the Spirit of God working in all of us all week to create something wonderful. We did everything from painting my face with stickers and felt pens, to standing around the fire, arms held high in worship to the One who loves us. From shouting so loud that Boys camp radios to see what's happening, to laying on the docks under the stars in silent awe of creation. From painting horses then swimming with them, to dancing around the dining room, jumping and twirling with joy that we are children of God.
This afternoon there is no girls, so the staff get the afternoon and evening off then new girls come tomorrow.But today I went up in the tree house by myself and was praying and just lying under the trees breathing deeper than I have all week, and God broke me all over again with the realisation that I know nothing at all about His Love. That His love is fierce and furious and He longs for me and I barely understand any of it... But I will rest in that. This is where I belong. I am Abbas' child.

Summer Pre Camp 2012

This past week I have been living at Girls Camp where all the leadership team have pre camp training... lots of seminars, role plays, questioning, learning stuff.... and it has been the most incredible week!
The group of women I am living with here are such a massive blessing to me and it has been so great to be in a place long enough and be with the same people long enough to begin to make deep and and lasting friendships, something I have missed so much since leaving my friends back home. The environment here is so uplifting and encouraging, the Spirit of the Lord is here and so there is freedom.
There has been so many good conversations and times of worship and prayer... I have laughed so much and cried a few times and the other girls here have stood alongside me and I am so grateful.
Tomorrow the first lot of campers come and I cant even describe how excited I am for this!
I am leading in what they call the Pioneer section (there are 4 different sections for the different age groups) so this will be girls who are 14,15 and 16 years old. I have never lead such old girls before and I am looking forward to it... mostly because I know that when I was that age, I longed for relationships with women just  few years older than me, and I was blessed enough to experience that and I know what a huge influence they were on me. So I am lookign forwrd to pouring out on these girls and encouraging them, being their friend, loving them.
This is all I have time to write at the moment, even though I could write for hours about what I have experienced in this week alone! For those of you who are praying people, if you could be praying for me sometimes I would love that! For wisdom for how to love these girls well, for energy to be passionate about what I'm doing here, for rest and the ability to abide in God and not try and do this out of my own strength...
I love you all.

Where the colours go...

 I have a little bit more time before I move to Girls camp, so I thought I would do one last post, and try to articulate this idea, an image that I've been thinking about for the past month. 
It started when I was sitting in Pittsburgh airport leaving the States and I thought to myself "Where on earth has the last month gone! I feel like I only just left NZ!"
Since then I have thought a lot about where time and experience goes when it's passed you by and I have this image in my head that I want to try and articulate.
There are some moments that we experience more deeply than others, moments of great joy or surprise or pain or peace or community or heartbreak....moments in which we are acutely aware that we are experiencing something special or out of the ordinary, moments that we can step outside of while still being in them and understand that this makes you alive, that it makes you feel. And then the moment passes, you move on and it becomes a memory and it in some ways it seems like that peice of time was just passing by and you happened to be in its path but now it's gone and you are still the same. But I dont think this is true...
I feel like all of those experiences, all the sights, sounds, smells, conversations, hugs, tears, love, pain, smiles, emotion...all of that is a gift from above and as we live them and pass by, they become like colours. Swirls and drops and strokes of colour that mix and blend... in my mind they look like the Northern Lights. Then these colours go down somewhere deep inside us where they can be remembered but not touched anymore, they can't be changed, they just are. And there they expand, dancing and moving, creating in us maturity and experience and growth. The moments that become colours change us in ways that we don't always notice but will always be there. I think sometimes we try to stop the moments leaving, we try and analyse them and record them, or we try to re create such a moment because it made us feel awake for once and we dont want it to pass and for us go back to merely existing.... but in reality it doesnt pass. It stays deep down inside us where the colours go, to a place we cant follow but that is so much a part of us that it doesnt matter.
And I think that one day, the walls of heaven will be painted with these colours...All the moments from every heart that were too sacred to capture or to articulate...they become colours and will line heaven in a glorious display of what life looks like when we are most aware of it happening.

Over the past month I have been blessed to experience many of these moments and i know that I am changed because of it. Where I am able to just be. To experience.
That moment of simple joy when a cardinal lands on the deck next to me, or when a squirrel runs across the telephone wire. When my heart breaks to see my friend hurting so much and I realise how painful love can be. When I go flying through night on a quad bike eating dust and fumes but so filled with the miracle that I can feel so at home on the other side of the world. When I stand on the deck in the middle of a lightning storm and the thunder gets inside me and just for a split second I feel the fear of God. When I stop in the middle of worship with my hands over my face completely overwhelmed by how much of a sinner I am. When we stand back from the canvas we covered and realise that God has appeared in every stroke and every idea, that the art became worship. When I look out over the community love feast and see Jesus eating taco salad and lasagne with the least of these. When I find a tiny chapel in the woods and pour out my heart with tears before the One who knows it best. When I stay up late and laugh till I cry and till I can't breathe, with a friend I only just met. When I hear a NZ accent and I feel such a sharp longing to be with my friends in the same moment that my heart is trying to make a home here. When stand on the end of the dock and watch the dark thunder clouds rolling across the lake toward me...
These moments. These are the moments that colour my life.

Summer!

Now that it's getting up to around 31 degrees and we are swimming until about 9 at night... I think I can say quite safely that we have entered summer up here in Canada now. This means a few different things... It means that those people i love back home are most likely pretty cold as they read this, that some of you have snow outside, some of you have fires going and some of you are jealous of me. It means that the mosquitos are out in full force here, I think at one point I had a total of about 45 bites on me at once. The guys say that if you dont use bug spray and just tough it out, your body will get used to it and it wont be so freakin annoying... but I havent worked out if they are secretly using spray and its this big joke to watch me trying to become immune to something my body was not designed to get used to... i will tell you if this ever happens. It means that the Outdoor Ed team here for the 2011-2012 season are packing up and leaving, some back home, some to summer camps. I've only been here 3 weeks but I've enjoyed working with them and hanging out in the evenings a whole lot... if next year's team is anything like this, I will have a lot of fun! It means we had to shut down the entire site yesterday to get it ready for the summer...so clean everything, organise everything, return everything to other camp sites, fix everything that was broken... and I used to think Friday afternoon clean ups at Teapot were bad... wow. But most of all it means that in a couple of days I will be moving over to Girls camp for the summer months. For those of you who dont really know what my role there is, I thought I would talk a bit about it. Girls camp is a seperate site from the rest of the camp, on the other side of the lake and during the summer for two months they run camps for girls aged 11-16. There is a massive staff team, everyone from instuctors to cooks to cleaning people to chalet leaders to worship leaders to directors to nurses.... about 70 in all this summer. My job is as a chalet leader for the older girls, so those aged 15/16 ish. I will have a group of about 4 or 5 girls for a week (or sometimes for two weeks) and I live with them in a chalet in the bush... I do fun things with them during the day, I sleep in there with them at night, I do bible studies,I listen to their stories, I have campfires with them, jump into the lake with them... pretty much I just get to love them and be their friend for 6 days. Then we change over on a Sunday, the staff get a day off and we all go to church at the outdoor chapel across the lake... hopefully sleep a few hours, then the next group of girls arrive on Monday morning. So it will be a pretty crazy intense summer with a lot going on, which I am so excited about but Im also aware of people burning out when they live like this for too long. So for those of you who are praying people.... if you could be praying for energy and passion for me, that I would be able to bless and serve the community I am living with, both the girls who come and the women I am working alongside, that would be so much appreciated.
This will most likely be my last post for the summer, as I dont have access to a computer or to the internet except on a few occasions... but i will have so many great things to write about when summer is over! untill then, thank you for your prayers. I've found a home here, but I still miss a lot of you a lot of the time.

Come and Play

Renan and I playing in Lake Clearwater after dinner

Staff afternoon in the Lake once the group leaves!

Something I have been learning over the past month is how important it is to PLAY. To go outside and run around, to tackle eachother, to start water fights, to jump in the lake, to throw a frisbee, to laugh until it hurts, to kick the soccer ball around... We were created with the desire to have fun and to play and be silly, its part of who we are! But so often we take ourselves so seriously and going out and doing something that may result in being undignified is out of the question. My job here at camp is pretty much to play and have fun and help other people do the same thing, so it's a lesson I have been learning in a really awesome way, around other people who are experts at playing.
So next year as I go to university then begin work afterward, I dont ever want to forget how to play. Everyday. It makes me come alive again.

Abiding

'Abide in Me and I in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit without the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.' - John 15:4

A few days ago I had an afternoon off and I went walking in the forest that surrounds the camp. There's lots of little trails that run through the trees and I was following them, not really knowing where I was going... At the moment it's thunderstorm season here and it can be beautiful and sunny in the morning but within an hour, black clouds roll across the lake and thunder cracks every few minutes. Then everything goes quiet and the birds stop singing, the deer sit still and the leaves even stop shaking... then the thunder splits the heavens open and the rain pours down while lightning flashes across the sky and its glorious and captivating and terrifying.   This is what happened while I was out walking.    I wasnt really sure where I was in the forest so I started back tracking, attempting to get home before the storm got any worse and as I was running back through the trees I came across this tiny little chapel, so I went inside to wait out the rain a bit.  The smell of wood is so strong in here, like a carpenters shop and there are perfectly crafted little wooden pews facing a tiny alter at the front. The walls are thick so when I shut the door it suddenly became very quiet and still... I had entered the sanctuary in the middle of the storm.
I had just planned to stay until the rain stopped, but I ended up spending most of the afternoon in there, praying and singing and pouring my heart out before the One who knows it best. And as I was in there, the whisper in my heart was the words from this verse.... Abide in Me.    Abide in Me My daughter, don't break away, stay. Abide in Me. Abide in Me. Abide.
So here I am, abiding in Him.

OPC

So after many months of emails, skype calls, application forms and phone calls... I have finally arrived at Ontario Pioneer Camp as an Outdoor Ed staff member! I know without a doubt that this is where God has called me for this year, so I have complete peace about being here, even though sometimes I know it will be hard and I will want to quit, I know that my place for this year lies here.
I am part of a team of about 7 ish outdoor ed instructors, all of them guys except one woman who has been away so I havent met her yet. They are great guys though, heaps of fun and I will enjoy working with them.
I am living in a house type building they call the apartment, above the kitchen with three other women, they are great :)
The camp itself is so beautiful, a testimony to the glory and creativity of God. Its set on the edge of a lake and there are hundreds of acres of forest, with trails running all through it. Most of the buildings are beautiful old wooden ones, a typical Canadian scene. I will put a photo or two up eventually, but the last few days it has been bad weather and I want to put up photos without all the rain.
Tomorrow I am going to go to church and try to get connected with some people...I miss having a church that I go to each week and can call home, so I am excited about that. And then I will also have some friends that aren't from camp that I can do things with on my days off, otherwise I will never leave this place!
The job I have is great... it has God and nature and kids and exersise...all things that I love!