Every weekday this summer, I spent time in the morning after breakfast with the cabin leaders on summer staff. My role this summer was to lead and shepherd this group in a way that allowed them to pour their lives out on campers.
In some of the final meetings, we spent some time sharing stories from the summer. I will post some video of these stories soon, but I wanted to give you a taste (camper names are modified).
Noah. Noah, one of our cabin leaders, sat and told the story of a boy name Eric. On Wednesday in the cabins, they talked about the good samaritan.
Noah asked the group, “Do any of you have someone who is just really hard to love?” Several of the students listed off different people they thought of. Eric mentioned that his little sister (who happened to be a camper that week) is one of the hardest people he has to love.
On Friday toward the end of camp at the pool party, Noah looked over and saw
Eric holding his little sister who was crying. Walking up to Noah, Eric said, “do you care if I walk her back to her cabin, she’s a little homesick?”
At that moment, Noah’s heart melted as he saw Eric genuinely loving the sister he found so difficult to love.
Britany. Britany shared the story of a couple of girls named Mary and Anne, who were going to be freshmen in high school this year. When she met with them individually, they talked about doubts and the cost of following Jesus.
A couple nights later at the evening gathering, Mary came up to Britany and said, “I’m glad God can help me and stuff. I just don’t know if I want lose all my friends. I don’t want to commit to God if it means losing them”
Britany kindly turned toward her and said, “there will come a time in our lives when our friends aren’t enough. You have to come to the point where you can say, “I need you Jesus.”
In a surprising non-chalant way she said, “Okay, I’ll do it” and walked off.
A little shocked, Britany wondered what just happened. Later on that night at the very beginning of their evening cabin time, Mary excitedly raised her hand and said, “okay, I’ve got something to tell everyone. I’ve decided to give my life to Jesus, and I really want to tell all my friends. I’m so excited, and I just love Him, I really just love Jesus.”
One of Brittany’s favorite parts about this story is that Mary and Anne live in Liberty, Mo where Brittany goes to school, and they’ve agreed to continue to meet over the school year.
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