Day 4 - Thursday
Wear the same shirt once, and it's a funny accident. Wear the same shirt on the next day accidentally and people start looking at you funny.

The whole thing I said yesterday about having lots of energy. That's done. I woke up this morning still pretty tired. I attended the Middle School session and was amazed when the speaker, Jason Raitz, was able to name all 150 kids by name in the session and continue to call on them during some of the interactive parts by name. We had 5 kids oversleep and ended up about 45 minutes late for session, so they ended up getting the chance to clean up one of the buses. Lucky them. After session, we hung out at the inflatable jousting event and I told them if any of our guys could beat me, I'd revoke their punishment. None did. One of them did get a lucky shot off right through the open spot in the helmet that cracked me hard enough in the head to see stars. After that some of the guys and I headed out to get some pictures around some of the odd statues on campus. We then went to the dollar store and got caught in another torrential downpour, returning to a tornado warning. We hung out in the basement for a while until it was over, and then played with all of the crap we bought from the dollar store (and oh, what crap it was). The guy's bought a bunch of plastic ninja swords and amused themselves for hours.

We had a huge group go help out at the Ronald McDonald home today. The guys cleaned and the girls did some administrative work to help out. The group was mostly Crossroads people, which I was very proud of. It was excellent to see such a selfless group from our church go. We need to teach service as a higher value to our kids and this was a great start.

I went to Jason's session today and again, he had a huge crowd. It's cool to see how he's grown as a teacher and how he tackles some of the most complex issues in a simple way. I watched him answer a one-on-one question that was posed to him about why as Christians we need to get out of our own little "Christian Worlds" with a simple object lesson. He took out a lighter and lit it, asking the kid how visible it was to the other people in the room. Not very, he replied. Jason then asked him how visible it would be to everyone if we turned off the lights and it was the only light source in the room. The kid got it. I can imagine Jesus answering the question the same way.

Bob Rays came down with Anne and Joey, hanging out with the kids in a way he does so well. He brought a bunch of barbecue stuff so that we can grill out tomorrow afternoon. I introduced Bob at the session tonight as Chauncy Billups and lots of kids were convinced it was him, or something close.

The worship band did a great acoustic set tonight for about 45 minutes that was awesome. After session all of our group went bowling, which was fun. Shinn came up with ways to bowl on each frame - backwards, laying down, wrong-handed, etc. and the kids had a blast.

It's fun for me to look out over these kids and remember back to when a lot of them were my kids back in 6th, 7th and 8th grade and to see where they're at now. Almost all of our leaders were my kids in 6th grade, and they've either already graduated or are just now graduating from High School and coming back to help at the same camp they went to for years. Kasey, Matt, Zach, Bobby, Drew and Jeff have done an awesome job this year, taking the whole experience to the next level for our church.

I talked to Cathie tonight and the kids are doing great. Having been gone since Saturday, it sucks to be away like this on top of all of the travel I do for work. I have to shut down that side of me to a degree and focus on stuff here at camp, otherwise it's almost too much of a bummer to deal with. I can't wait to see them on Saturday.

You can see the pictures from Day 4 here.