Week 1 is upon us!!

Hello Friends and Family!
How is it going? Orientation is officially over. Week 1 starts today… I can’t believe we are here. The past two weeks has flown by, yet it has gone by really slow.
I love family camp for many reasons, its great to see all kinds of families come through camp. Its is humbling and honoring to watch the Lord work through this camp to restore broken families, and it is an encouragement to serve alongside my peers who desire to follow the Lord passionately. But one thing I really love about family camp is how it renews my passion and desire to raise a godly family. This week alone I believe we’ve heard anywhere from 3-5 talks on marriage and the family. One of the speakers told us, “the best time to work on your marriage is now, before you’re married”. I believe that’s true. I don’t take for granted the fact that I have been blessed with the opportunity to sit under some great people and watch their marriages.
My parents celebrated their 23rd wedding anniversary yesterday. I must say, out of all the marriages, theirs is the one I desire to imitate the most. Not only are they a great representation of Christ and His bride. But they are a great example of how the Lord can use just two people to change a generation. I was talking to some fellow staff members yesterday about how watching my parents marriage, and hearing on these marriage talks makes me excited for marriage and motherhood. It is not something I look on with dread, or resignation that it’ll probably happen one day, but it is something that I have been praying for since I was younger. If you’re married right now and reading this recognize the incredible position the Lord has put you in. Our director “Hip Shot” said it yesterday, but marriage is a reflection of the Gospel. When husbands love their wives like Christ loved the church and wives submit to their husbands as the church is to submit to Christ they are painting a picture. What an opportunity!
And moms… what greater a blessing than to get to shepherd the next generation. I feel like being a camp I see it more clearly how the enemy has really attacked the family. Not only has he gotten us through divorce, but he has made mothers feel insignificant. I believe there is no greater job than being a parent, and motherhood is the highest calling a woman can have in life. You have the opportunity to raise your children in the Lord, to show them real life examples of Christ. Look at the Proverbs 31 woman. She is the bombdotcom. And can I take this moment to say. My mom is that woman. Not perfectly, but she is a great example of what a Proverbs 31 woman looks like.
So, can I say how much I LOVE working with my brother at camp. Above is a picture of us at starbucks yesterday waiting to do laundry and get some internet. Its been cool to watch my brother with other people. He is definitely outgoing, and the life of the party. I have had so many proud older sister moments. Ross is definitely a gentleman and loves the Lord, and its been neat to sit back and watch him as his sister take care of his other sisters in Christ. Ross got a camp name last week, and while it doesn’t have the name ‘Smacks’ anywhere its still pretty cool. His name is “Trifecta”. And of course he thinks it’s the coolest thing ever.
I tell you what. this week has been encouraging. Several people have randomly encouraged me and instilled confidence in me about my job. The theme in a lot of the talks this week has not only been marriage, but being confident that the Lord supplies what He demands, and that He will call you AND equip you. While I still have moments where I’m really insecure about my job, I’m trying to focus on pleasing the Lord and not people.
Well, thanks for sticking it out this long, I will stop talking and let you get back to the real world. I would humbly ask for your prayers though (and letters too if you want to send some).
Specifically, if you could continue to pray that I would rely on the Lord, and that He would cause me to depend totally on Him and look only to Him for approval. Pray for the families that will be arriving in a few hours. Some are in a great place, others are really hurting and broken, but all are needing to be refreshed. Pray for the staff that we would continue to deepen our unity and that we would love each other unconditionally. Also, this may sound silly, but pray that the scary animals /bugs would stay away. We have had 2 scorpion stings, several yellow jacket stings, and seen multiple huge spiders. Now I recognize we’re at camp, and I don’t mind seeing these things, but I woke up several times last night worried that I might wake up with a scorpion in my bed…
Well, I’m gonna go. Have a wonderful week and I will attempt to write after week 1. God bless!
In Him,
Raychel

Bluffs Blog #3

Hello Friends!
I hope this blog finds you well and excited for summer. I myself am quite excited to be back at Pine Cove. We just finished our first week of training, which is where all the specialty training goes on. Our lifeguards are trained, our ropes people are trained, our boat drivers are trained, and then people come to help set up camp. This week was good, it had some rough moments, I won't lie, but over all it was wonderful.
I am so excited to be surrounded by people who are willing to serve the Lord for a summer and sacrifice so much, it truly makes me excited for heaven when I'm here.
Well, about halfway through this week our camp director asked the leadership team what we are most nervous about this summer. My answer was failing. The thing that has plagued me the most is feeling like I'm inadequate, that I will do a horrible job as program director this summer and that the people I with will regret hiring me. Now I recognize that some of that is just Satan trying to distract me and get me to focus on things other than my main purpose for being here. But let me show you the amount of sin wrapped up in that statement that the Lord has revealed to me over the past couple of days.
1) Pride. That is one of the sins I struggle with the most. I like to thing I can do it all myself. Even this week I had a moment when I was overwhelmed and not having fun, and I thought to myself "I should ask for help on this project" my initial reaction was "no I got this. I can do it by myself", but the Lord reminded me of all the great things He did when I laid down my pride last summer. So I asked for help and the result was better than anything I could have imagined.
2)Idolatry. Idolatry is when you put anything before or higher than God. Can you see the idolatry in the statement I made about my biggest fear? It is my fear of man. I am so afraid of letting people down, and of them being disappointed or not liking me. Many times I'm more worried about what they think than what the Lord thinks. I quickly find myself doing things to please man and make him happy, rather than pleasing the Lord and trying to make HIM happy.
3) Dependence on myself (I'm not sure what you call that... Pride maybe?) I laugh when I find myself thinking that things are not going to go well if I don't do it. Somehow I got into this mentality that I have to do everything, and do it perfect, otherwise it won't work at all. But if there is one thing I remember from my past summers is that the Lord doesn't need me. He chooses to work through me, but He could do it on His own. And that He uses the lowly and humble. His grace is made perfect in my weakness, and it is sufficient for when I can't do it on my own.
My prayer the past couple of days has been that the Lord would step in and use me. That Raychel McKelvy would step out of the way, and allow the Spirit of the Lord to work through here. I was to be a vessel emptied out for His use this summer.
Please know that I am SUPER excited for this summer, but the Lord is faithful to grow those who ask to be grown, and He is faithful to complete the good work He began in me.

So, for those of you who don't know, this summer my job is going to be program director for our camp the "Bluffs". This means anything program wise, I am overseeing it. I have a right-hand man Take Out who is going to help set up and his job is to oversee/ minister to all of the sections outside of the programs. I am excited for my job because it allows me to do the things I love: hanging and talking with people and acting and being on stage. I am also nervous because it is quite a big responsibility and again, I don't feel equipped to lead a bunch of people. But the Lord has brought nothing but encouragement my way since I've been here, and the amount of people that have confidence in me being in this position is heartening.

Ok. I will sign off, but I have a couple of request for you my reader.
1)Prayer. Just prayers for the things I mentioned above, and that I would stay focused on the things the Lord has placed in front of me and not worry about things outside my control.
2) Letters. I love receiving hand-written letters, and I've decided this summer to beg for them. So if you think about it, I would love to hear from y'all this summer in letter form. So you can write to me:
Raychel "Reba Smackentire" McKelvy
Pine Cove Bluffs Camp
P.O. Box 9055
Tyler, TX 75711-9055

Have a wonderful summer!!
In Him,
Raychel

Bluffs Blog 2!

So, we made it to Texas. In record time. Google maps told us it would take us 11 hours and 14 minutes and we did it in 10 hours exactly. Before you get yourself in a tizzy, just know that we never went more than 7 miles over the speed limit. But we only stopped 3 times and our stops were never longer than 10 minutes.
It was so much fun to ride in the car with Kirstyn and Ross. First of all, it’s probably the most Ross and I have spoken to each other since he left for Moody Bible Institute in August. Let me tell you what. The Lord has done some amazing work in my brother’s life. His desires and passions and the amount of focus he has now is incredible. There were moments of listening to him talk that I wanted to either laugh or cry because the change in him is so amazing.
So, after we grabbed out much needed Starbucks coffee, we drove (or rather Kirstyn drove) and Ross and I dominated the conversation for the next 2 hours. We then got into interesting conversations such as physical and personality turn offs and turn ons of the opposite sex, top five favorite movies (where we found out that if a chick flick is in your top five you lose the respect of Ross).
We arrived at our friends the Fitzsimmons’ lake house around 5pm that evening and they have treated us like royalty since. They gave us a phenomenal dinner of steak, potatoes, green beans, salad, coke salad, Texas sheet cake, and Blue Bell ice cream. This morning we were treated to a wonderful breakfast of Belgium waffles, fruit, and bacon, along with the most wonderful coffee follow it all down.
Today has been a wonderful morning of relaxing, fellowshipping, and enjoying God’s creation. The picture above is the view of the lake we have from the porch at the lake house. We are currently packing up our stuff so we can drop off our rental car and head to camp!
I am SO excited right now, and I will probably write again next week. Please pray for Ross, Kirstyn, and I as we go through a week of intense training. Ross has to get 40 hours of swimming in, Kirstyn 40 hours of ropes training in, and my self I have to get a lot of the details planned for the summer.
I am SUPER excited to see what God is going to do this summer. We have had a lot of obstacles and problems just trying to get to camp, and we know that we have an enemy trying to keep us from serving whole-heartedly this summer. So we would covet your prayers for us as a Pine Cove staff and for the families and children that will be coming to camp this summer.
Until next week!!
In Him,
Smacks

Summertime with Smacks!

Hello Friends!

So I’ve decided to try to blog about this summer. I’ve had several people ask me to keep them updated, and while I’d love to contact each and everyone of you, I know it will be virtually impossible, so I figured this is the best way.
So, today is the eve of our trip to TX. We are actually arriving at a lakehouse owned by some friends of ours right outside of Athens, TX. And Sunday afternoon we will head to Pine Cove. Myself, my brother Ross, and my friend Kirstyn will be driving in a rented car tomorrow.
This is going to be a bit short because I’ve still got to keep packing and go to bed and get ready to help drive tomorrow. But just know that this summer is the most conflicted I’ve felt out of any summer I’ve gone to Pine Cove.
On one hand I am SUPER excited to go to camp. I love being at Pine Cove and serving the families and staff that come every week. But on the other hand I want to stay in Nashville. I realized that this will most likely be the last summer I spend living in Nashville, and there will also be a lot of fun things happening in Nashville too. Also, this summer I feel more connected to a larger group of people, and I know that a lot of things change in 3 months and there is a part of me that wants to be here to experience those changes.
I know the Lord is going to some great things this summer. I know He is always working in my life, and Pine Cove is a way He works in concentrated doses.
So, I will try to write a blog while on the road to give you more information, but I thought I’d at least let you know that I’m going to try to write on here every weekend. Have a wonderful summer! Pine Cove Bluffs Summer 2011!!
In Him,
Reba Smackentire