Summer Wrap Up

Here's a couple things from the summer.  Just to catch us up before the Fall blogging season really begins.

This was very early in the summer.  The turtles were out and about, and Rob is always looking for animals to pick up.  All those turtles led to a classic Lee Brown story.  Lee Brown directs the program department here at camp, and he's somewhat of a nature guru.  He told us that you can tell a male turtle because he has big claws.  Apparently he uses those to brush against the face of females and melt their hearts.  It's classic Lee Brown.  I could tell more stories about Lee, but they are much better coming straight from him.

During the summer we clean all morning after the campers leave.  Once cleaning is done we have the rest of the day off usually.  I enjoyed stuffing soccer games into that time, but after that everyone wants a good dip in the lake.  Since I'm still certified to lifeguard, I was able to open the lake up on many of the afternoons.  One of those times a couple of the swimmers wanted to kayak to the other side and swim for a bit.  So I tossed a life tube in a canoe and went across the lake with them.  Made for a mobile life guarding station for a little while.

This isn't the best picture, but I think it gets the point across.  I helped out witht the maintenance issues on the West Side.  That usually meant plunging toilets in the ladies bathrooms.  The funny thing is that they usually had plunged it well enough, and they just needed to give it another flush to try it.  On the other hand there were a couple terrible messes that I had to call in back up for.  Otherwise there were light bulbs I'd mess with, and a couple of non-critical things that I left for the real maintenance guys.

The zip line was my second home this summer.  Actually my third home.  My first was the West Side Dining hall, the second was my bedroom, and finally the zipline.  The last week we had a couple of thunderstorms roll through, delaying some of the zipline times.  Since the tower has no roof I hunkered down under my umbrella while waiting for new groups to come up.

All in all the zipline was fun to work.  It's neat to get to see all the campers at some point, and it's an important part of safety at camp.  I thank God for the vigilance and the endurance to keep running the zipline on the super hot afternoons.  Also for the patience to deal with Thunder delays with a positive attitude.

So I'm happy the summer is over.  It pushes you to the limit to work so hard and just keep going.  I'm also sad to see the summer staff go.  I njoy meeting all these folks who come out to help.  Hopefully many of them will return for retreats as part time staff or as campers.  Thank God for the ministry He lets us be a part of at camp.