High School Camp

This past week was incredible. I had the privilege of spending the week with eight girls from LA who all attend youth group at the World Impact Teen Center, Kaleo.

This past week, we had incredible amounts of fun. This was most definitely one of the weeks of my life I laughed the most in.

These girls are amazing. The majority of the girls are going into their senior year of high school. It was wonderful to have conversations about college, the future, life call, and God's direction with many of these girls. I also got the chance to talk and pray with girls about real struggles with self-image, abandonment, and abuse.

Thursday night after the big party where we got down on the dance floor and rocked Karaoke, we had an awesome cabin devotional time. We spent 2.5 hours praying for and encouraging one another. What a blessing to know these girls will return and have each other to support each other, as well as their incredible youth leader Sheila who co-counseled with me for the week.

On Friday when we said goodbye we exchanged hugs and tears. I'm asking God for the opportunity to see some of those girls again sometime.

God is good.

Jr. High Camp Update

Thank you so much for all of you who read my post about Jr. High camp and prayed for me. God's grace really carried me through the week. By the end of it, my girls who pretended they hated camp and me for most of the week were hugging me and telling me they were going to miss me and miss camp. I got to see God move powerfully to unite our cabin during the week and see the girls in my cabin respond to the love of God.

At one point in the week, girls from another cabin said some harsh words to one of the girls in my cabin, Cat. As she was crying, two of the girls that had been fighting with Cat all week came and put there arms around her and comforted her. During our devotions time that night after Fire Circle, Cat started crying and apologized to the other girls for fighting. She said "Where I'm from, people don't ever let go of grudges. Today, when Taylor and Destiny put their arms around me I knew that forgiveness was real and God's love was real. I know now that I can forgive people, and I don't have to hold grudges."

Praise God for His work!

Jr. High Camp

I've got a cabin of five jr. high girls, and I could use your prayers! This week so far has been a challenge. Our cabin is very divided, and very negative. It seems that I am trying to break up a fight for the majority of time. These girls are tough, from hard lives. Pray that I can reach them, and more importantly, that God softens their heart and they respond to His Spirit.

Pray for strength, patience, endurance, and the ability to communicate love clearly, especially while disciplining.

Thank you for reading and praying.

Teepee

Sunday ten wonderful girls from Hope Gardens (see below) arrived in my cabin for the week. On Monday, my supervisor had to move me to a different cabin because another group brought more kids than expected and the counselor to camper ratio was off. At first, this was difficult for me to have a good attitude about, but God was gracious enough to work in my heart and change it. I have since been having a blast with 11 girls from Bakersfield/Lancaster area.

This past Tuesday night we hiked up the hill and camped out in a teepee. We all laid in a circle with our heads in the middle. As I looked at those 11 beautiful little faces, I was reminded how incredible the image of God in His creation is. Before Liz (my co-counselor this week) sang us all to sleep, we had a sweet time of prayer together. It was encouraging to see some of the girls who hadn't opened up yet share during prayer requests time, but it was also difficult to hear the girls share such weighty requests. Here a few that were mentioned as we went around the circle:

• Pray for my dad - he is an alcoholic.
• Please pray that my mom will stay in Teen Challenge so she can get better and take care of us again.
• Pray for my mom and dad because my dad has a girlfriend.
• Pray for my parents because they have been fighting and I want them to stay together.
• Pray for my step-dad because eh works in the oil fields and it's really dangerous - he already lost a couple of fingers.
• Pray for my dad - he works in the oil fields 12 hours a day and I worry about him everyday he goes to work because it is dangerous.
• Pray for me because my older sister killed herself in March five days before her 17th birthday and my auntie died five days later.
• My dad is an alcoholic.
• Pray for my dad - he's a firefighter in Lancaster and last year two of his co-workers died. I worry about him.
• Please pray for my dad in prison.
• Pray for my brother in jail. I want him to get out because he has a baby.

Will you join me in praying for these requests this week? Thank you so much for even taking the time to read this. I feel your prayers and support - thank you!

I work with wonderful people.

The faces we make on a Friday night after a long week of camp has come to a close.

Lunch at Rosey Dining Hall

This is what we look like on Sunday afternoons - check in time!

My Roommates (L to R): Bionca, Vaneetha, and Lois.

The longer I am here, the more impressed I am with quality people I work with. They are so gifted in so many areas, and all of them have chosen to use them this summer to show God's love to kids. I love hearing stories of their journeys, many of them growing in the same tough neighborhoods our campers are coming from.

Night Hike & Hope Gardens Girls

Above you will see me with one of my campers from 1st-3rd grade, Miriam. On the last day of camp, she wrote me a note that read "Thank you for helping me Haley. I will miss you so much."

My last couple days with my girls this past week were great. Our last night together, after the night pool party, our cabin hiked up the trail to tents to camp out (each cabin camps out once a week). We have the kids hand us any flashlights we have and do the hike totally in the dark. It's cool to see how the kids respond to the idea of God creating the night, and giving our eyes the ability to adjust to the dark, as it was all new to them. When we got to the top, we had everyone stop and be completely silent as we looked up at the stars. We then asked everyone who saw something they had never seen before to raise the hands, and almost everyone's hand went up.

During our debrief from the week yesterday afternoon I was given the list of girls that will be in my cabin this next week. I will be working with another counselor here named Jen to lead a cabin of ten girls. All of these girls are coming from Hope Gardens, and transitional living facility for women and children coming off of the streets. Pray for me, as I connect and minister to ten little girls that have only recently had somewhere to call home.

Pray that God would continue to give me strength and His heart.

Thank you for taking the time to check out what's going on with me here.

Ant Free!

Quick update: Last night we got to move to new cabins - yay! We had to split up the cabin because the cabins we moved into are smaller, and it was cool to see all the girls be really sad that we couldn't be all together. That warms the heart of this counselor.

Tonight is camping night - we will hike up the hill tonight and stay in a teepee. We'll see how this goes.... :)