Day 5 - Friday

The last day of camp. On Monday it feels like Friday will never come and the kids won't get it and before you know it, we're almost at the end. Everyone was dragging this morning, but I feel like I'm doing alright so far today, especially for averaging less than 6 hours of sleep a night and being on the go non-stop from 7 - 1 every day.

We had breakfast and session this morning at camp, and then John, Mark and I met with the school to discuss next year's contract. Kenyon College treats us great, and the guy in charge, Fred really values our attendance from a business and a spiritual perspective. It's another super-muggy day, every second the sun is out, you instantly sweat. After the team games, Bob and Anne Rays had setup a barbecue and grilled out for Crossroads, the band and some of the other leaders at camp. One of the urinals in the guys bathroom next to my room got a paper towel stuck in it, flooded over and kept running. The drain was the high point in the room so all of the water ran into one of the guy's rooms and then down into a couple of rooms below. Oops. Nothing malicious, just a combination of a dumb action, a broken toilet and a bad drain.

The Battle of Helms Deep is an annual event that is tough to desribe. The kids are divided into two teams of about 80 and 320, the 80 person team at the top of a hill and the larger team at the bottom. Each team is equipped with a a ton of cut-in-half water noodles ,a few thousand water balloons and flour bombs, a piece of pantyhose with flour in it, tied at the end - roughly the size of a baseball. The teams at the bottom of his huge hill try and attack the team at the top and take their flag. Kids love it, wacking people with the water noodles (they don't really hurt), hurling water ballons and tossing these flour bombs. If you get out, you go back to your base. The water and the flour combine into a nasty paste on your skin that dries into a nasty mess. You end up with flour boogers for a week. Add a little yeast and some heat, and you've got yourself a nice little bread booger. Tasty.

Some of the guys came up with an ingenius contraption, taking their mattresses (very slippery) and laying them all the way down the steps and then sliding down on top of them on another mattress, with a big pad at the end to crash into. Safe? More-so than you'd think.

People are pretty low on energy and done most of the stuff once, so it's lot's of hanging out and talking, which is great with me. A bunch of guys and I hung out and went down to get some ice cream in town and picked up a gallon of milk. Why a gallon of milk you may ask? It's a little known fact that you cannot drink a gallon of milk within an hour and hold it down. The milk curdles in your stomach and expands, giving you projectile vomiting to the tune of the exocist - literally about 15 feet. I told James Raitz (Guitaurist in the 311 Worship Band) that if he could do it, I'd give him $50. He had 1:15 left in the hour and about 1/5 of the think left to drink when he blew chunks. I got it all on video and almost ralphed myself watching him do this. There was a huge crowd gathered around him cheering him on.

I had a proud moment today when hanging out with our guys. One of the guys in our group made an inappropriate remark about one of the girls in our group, trying to be funny. It got quiet. I said nothing, waiting to see how the other guys would respond. The guys in the group explained to him that by making a remark about our girls was like saying that about my sister, and that I'm very protective of my sisters. The guy apologized and learned a good lesson.

I went to the session that Jess Shinn taught about prayer. It was mostly our kids and we had a great discussion and we all learned some good stuff. I like the way Jess's brain processes stuff. She's a pure intellect and she's really learned how to bring it down to my level.

We closed up tonight with and an afro contest followed by worship and sessions. I'm so going to miss all of these people at this camp. I'm going to be at meetings in the next few weeks and not know quite how to act. Someone's going to make a quick movement and I'm going to immediately cover up my crotch, assuming someone's going to try and tip me. I loved doing the announcements this week in front of all 400+ people, getting to know so many different types of leaders and kids, hanging with our leaders and kids, and hanging with Shinn for long periods of time, which we don't get to do as often as I'd like. I'm so proud of how he leads this youth group, how he is such a great leader within the Evangelical Youth Fellowship Group, and what a great teacher and youth pastor he's become.

I finished up the evening hanging out with Shawn and Brad, going through my iPod, listening to tunes and talking about music. I was pulling out some old stuff, The Clash, The Who's Quadrophenia, Jethro Tull, and they knew it. Good to see that good rock is not dead. I then had a great conversation with a guy about where he's at in life and where he stands with Jesus. We talked for about an hour on what it means to trust him, where's he at in the process and what he's going to do to make sure that he doesn't walk away from camp forgetting where he's at right now. Another guy came in right after and shared with me some of the decisions he'd made this week about his girlfriend and in life. He's going to start coming to a breakfast small group that another guy and I have been doing, going through the book Wild at Heart together.

I'm going to be sad leaving all this, but I can't wait to see Cathie and the kids. When I let myself think about it, I miss them like crazy. It's always a tough transition from camp to Dad and husband, much tougher than from business traveler to Dad and husband.

We leave tomorrow morning at 8:30 AM. I can't wait.

You can see the Day 5 Velocity Pictures here.