Rachel's Reflections

This last week my two co-counselors and myself ended up with 16 girls ranging from 8-10 years old, but Sunday afternoon started with only one camper. The two of us just sat on the porch of our cabin for and hour and forty-five minutes and spent most of the time talking about God and her family. She loves the Lord and wants to live a life pleasing to Him. She has an amazing relationship with her entire family, and it was really touching to see how she interacted with her older brother during the week. We talked about how she prays for everything, big or little, and sees God answering her prayers (which was a needed reminder for me). Monday night five of our girls responded to the invitation to ask Jesus to save them from their sins. One of them was already saved, but wanted to know how to stop gossiping because she knew God hates it, and the other four became a part of God's family that night. One of them didn't have any previous knowledge of God, what Jesus had done for her, ...

Fourteen girls, nine white and five African-American, neither group sure what to do with the other group. The nine acting very cliquish because most of them had grown up together to the point where they were excluding the others while the five trying to make friends with them. The nine speed walking everywhere we went, the five strolling slowly along enjoying themselves. The Five were energetic, noisy, and full of life at night but slow as turtles in the morning, and the other half was the exact opposite. This is one of the first things my two co-counselors and I noticed Sunday and Monday about our group of preteen girls. As counselors we wanted to teach the girls to include others so we had them do several different group activities and other things so that by the end of the week they were doing better at talking to each other and making everyone feel more included. Wednesday night, after a dedication service, I got to talk to some of them about what that night meant to them. One o...

This week was definitely different from the other two weeks... I didn't know my co-counselor ahead of time, but we seemed to work well together for this week, especially since she was more used to older kids. Having older girls meant we were able to get into deeper conversations  with them, but then we also had to deal with more drama, like having crushes on boys and attitude issues. We had 10 girls, but they were a much more diverse group this week. We had three quiet Asian girls that hung out together, two MK's :) one from Romania and one from South Africa, after Monday night 9 out of the 10 were trusting in Christ alone to save them from their sins, we had two EXTREMELY hyper girls, one in particular was overly crazy at times, one had major attitude issues which one of the other girls didn't know how to handle and that exploded two or three times, and a few of them were wonderful, helpful, and kind. I noticed by Tuesday that they were very impressionable. They would come...

This last week was a great week! My two co-counselors and myself had 15 wonderful girls, from 8-10 years old, who got along great, kept themselves entertained when we needed them to, and at least half of them were serious about growing in their relationship with the Lord! They were honestly a big encouragement to me, one of them in particular was really mature and she would come up and ask "so, how's it going?" It felt like I was talking to one of my friends and she really became that by the end of the week.  From the beginning I was determined to pour my energy and love into the girls and because of that they got me to do several crazy things that I wouldn't normally do. One day, in order to be dismissed early for supper, they begged me to do the chicken dance while hopping up and down on one foot in front of the entire dining hall. I attempted to do just that while turning bright red from embarrassment and laughing with my girls, but we succeeded in being next to ...