This past week, I experienced my first summer camp as a youth leader. My summer and winter camps in high school were some of the most memorable and pivotal times in not only my early journey as a Christian, but as a teenager struggling to find my place in the world. Even with the guidance and example of the two older and more experienced leaders I was going with this year, being tasked with fostering a similar experience for all eleven of my students was more than a little daunting.
As these things tend to go, every assumption and expectation I brought in was thrown out, pretty much immediately. But as terrifying and disheartening as it all seemed at first, the week our little group actually experienced far surpassed anything I could have hoped for, and was exactly what we needed. There are dozens of memories we will keep and cherish from this camp, but there was one event in particular that perfectly captured the nature of the journey we began together during our week up on the mountain. Continue reading