I'm Back!!!

Well long time no talk readers.

Thanks for your prayers, I had quite a week. See, Friday night I was quarantined at our camp with a fever of 101.3. The fever continued until Sunday afternoon when they moved me to another camp because our camp doesn’t have the accommodations or the help for a fully sick person. I had been feeling good up until Sunday, when my fever spiked to 103.8, then I was just tired all the time, I had what I thought was a little congestion and was frustrated to be moving to a camp other than my own. When I got to the Shores camp the full-time nurse listened to my lungs and put some device on my finger that I later came to find out checks your oxygen levels. After all that, she proceeded to call some people and order a chest x-ray, an oxygen tank, and started me on a nebulizer treatment. I got my chest x-ray and they kept threatening to put me on the oxygen tank if I didn’t keep taking deep breaths. And let me tell you, for someone who is normally not sick for more than 24 hours, plus I wasn’t feeling that bad at the time of all this happening, I was a little scared.
Turns out I had bronchitis, and I am now on an antibiotic and an inhaler. I was stuck at the Shores camp until Tuesday morning because my fever kept insisting on going back up until then. So have no fear friends. I’m feeling good, so glad to be back at camp, almost all the congestion is out of my chest and I feel like I have full capacity of my lungs.
I was so excited to write about last week (week 3), so it pained me not to be able to. Week 3 was a good week. I know a lot of families week 3 and quite a few mom’s who have kept up with me over the year, and in fact read this blog now. Shout out to Mrs. McClellan, Mrs. Guy, and Momma Wendy. Week 3 was neat because I felt known, like I was able to pick up with people where I left off and they already knew me. It also was the most comfortable I’ve felt with my job up to date so things were just running along smoothly there. I also got adopted for the week and got to spend time with a good friend. My running buddy from last year, Ryan, and his family came week 3. Ryan and I were on leadership together last year and our programs were together a lot, and I have the immense privilege of working with is sister on leadership this summer. Their family is just really neat and they adopted me for the week, and it was great to have a momma and a daddy for a week when I missed my own family so much. I got to sing on Thursday night at the family banquet night and that was an amazing experience. I’ve always grown up watching my parents be able to move people through singing and the Lord allowed me the opportunity to do that on Thursday. I sang Amazing Grace and it was so neat to sing and be reminded of the awesomeness of God’s grace, and be able to remind people of that at the same time.
This week we just ended, week 4, was a good week… really interesting. I never realized how vital the first day and a half of camp were until I came back from quarantine. Showing up to camp on a Tuesday morning was a little awkward, and I felt a little out of sync the entire week, it was hard for me to reach out to families and be intentional with any of them and normally week 4 has been my week of connections.
I was really convicted about something this week. See, we have a staff bible study every Wednesday night led by a Pine Cove full-time staff member named Matt Lantz. It is an amazing study, and I’ve gone for the last 3 years and every year I feel like my eyes are opened so much to the richness and depth of God’s word through the study. Anyways, after bible study this past Wednesday, the girls in my cabin were commenting about how well Matt knows the bible and one of the girls challenged us and said we can know it that well. It got me to thinking… claiming to believe in something is a big deal, and if that something you believe in has a “guidebook” per say, you would expect that person to know it backwards and forwards. For a bad example, lets say a person said they fully believe in the Chick-fil-a way. That they were going to live their whole life for Chick-fil-a and follow all of the Chick-fil-a rules for the rest of their life. You would expect that person to know the Chick-fil-a handbook really well. You would expect them to know the inner workings of the company, its history, and what they stand for. You would expect if you asked a question that they would be able to point you to the exact spot in the handbook where that issue is discussed. Now I ask you, why aren’t Christians that way? I ask myself, why aren’t I that way? It is so easy to say that I believe in the Bible and that its true, yet I don’t read and know it like I believe its true. To say that you wholly believe in something is a big deal. If that belief is accompanied with the very words and the Creator of that belief, you would think the followers would desire to know the book.
So that is where I am right now. Praying that the Lord would give me an unsatifiable hunger and thirst for His word… not books written about being a believer, but the very words of God Himself. The Bible. I want to be satisfied with that and that alone.
Ok, I’ve talked your ear off enough for one day. One last thing… last night I got to watch 2 of my fellow past Pine Cove Staffers marry each other. It was an amazing ceremony and the most scripture-saturated, God-honoring wedding I’ve ever been to. It was such a blessing to celebrate with them on their happy day.
Thanks for reading. Love you all.
In Him,
Raychel