Day 17. The one after I missed a day

I did not have time to update last night and while unfortunate these things do happen during camp. I intend to explain why I missed posting as a sort of means to aquire forgiveness from my tiny cadre of loyal readers and to begin a dialogue that might help explain in some small part why I do this sort of thing time and time again. I only ask that If you read this you read it in its entirety, it'll be a bit longer but I hope it's worth your time.

Since I last posted we've been through our (at least the wranglers) busiest day of the week. On Thursday we do our regular two rides in the afternoon and also an additional ride in the morning. Understandably this makes for a very long day as we're leaving the pen at the time we're beginning to saddle on a more typical day. (If there is such a thing at camp) Well on this particular Thursday we went out and had 2 uneventful and smooth rides. Yep, that little bit of math that you did there was correct, there was a third ride that you might presume did not go as smoothly... If you did happen to presume such a thing, you did presume correctly. About halfway through this infamous ride in question we were headed down a slight slope, some brush on the right side of the line, a large patch of cactus to our left. At this inconvenient time one of our horses kicked at the horse behind him and the second horse, not wishing to be kicked more (a response I remember having during similar fights with my brothers) moved rapidly out of the way. The only problem is that his rider being completely unprepared for this was left floating in midair until gravity quickly brought him back to reality with a decisive plop. The great part was that he quickly got back up and upon the return of his horse he mounted and completed the ride. After the ride was over I awarded him the "cowboy of the day" award in the form of a can of mountain dew and all was well with the world.

Thursday night rolled around and the regular level of fatigue had developed. The counselors were with their kids out in after chapel time and the activity staff were in our regularly scheduled meeting and prepping for night games and debriefing the day... It was at this time that The "plan" went off the rails.

During the meeting we had a counselor stick her head in and request a director come out for an issue, shortly after the director returned (at a high speed) and informed us that there was a fight between two of the campers and that they needed help breaking it up. Immediately myself and a few others (planned for ahead of time) rushed out and helped contain the situation. From here on out the rest of the evening our standing mission was to have as normal a night of camp as possible while at the same time maintaining and restoring a sense of safety in the staff and campers.

Despite the disruption and a small amount of culture shock, I had the opportunity to stay up until all the campers were asleep. I intentionally use the word opportunity because there were a great deal of incredible things that happened during the stressful after-action period. In no particular order and in annoyingly brief detail...

I saw a group of boys happily camp out in the fort instead of sticking to the "safe" confines of camp. Their counselor is a pretty quiet guy but he's incredibly reliable when it counts.

I saw another cabin full of boys have a pillow fight that raged late into the night, craziness and hyperactivity abounded and that was encouraged and celebrated just as it would have been on any other thursday night.

Because we were busy with other things and our lantern had been misplaced by the time the group had gotten to the firepit there was no fire (or "lampfire") waiting. Not missing a beat the CIT's (counselors in training) quickly gathered flashlights and placed them in the firepit which resulted in a nice fake fire and songs and such continued as normal.

Friday was the regular scramble to clean camp and get everyone on buses followed by 99% of the staff crashing for a few hours...

Now, in the words of my good friend adam this was not a normal thursday but it was also not unexpected. Here at ACK we feel very strongly that any kid that wants to come to camp should be able to. Because of this history we often get the sort of kids that no one else wants at their camps. When I first came into contact with ACK a little over a year ago this seemed a bit odd and also quite risky to me, but I was assured by people who had been with the organization for a while that it was worth the risk.

Now allow me to expound upon that last bit for a moment, When I first started camp it was in a similar setting to this one in a very important way. In both south dakota and wyoming we have the risk of running into rattlesnakes while we are out and about our 'normal' camp activities. We are very aware of this issue and view it as a legitimate risk to balance with the effective locations we had back then and the camp I'm at right now. 

In the same way when someone opens their hearts and 'home' to kids from incredibly difficult situations the legitimate risk that we take on is that occasionally we have to deal with situations like fights, or behavior that isn't normal with lower risk populations. Some of us are trained for those situations and we are quite capable of dealing with them when they do come up, but there is little to no way to eliminate that risk entirely. Especially without removing our contact with kids who desperately need to know someone likes them, and that Christ died for them too, not just the white church kids from the rich neighborhoods. As one who has been around long enough to see the good along with the more difficult situations I count it a cost well worth paying. The Impact we have on any child who will give us a week of their time is incredible and any child should be allowed that opportunity.

Anyway, I'm exhausted and might not have presented my position terribly well in this writing. If it is chaotic and disjointed when I re-read it tomorrow night I'll post an addendum or clarification at that time.

As always if you get to this point I appreciate you, Whether I know you or not I am very aware that I do not perform my job adequately when I do it in a vacuum. Your prayers, support, and regard are incredibly important to me and I cannot thank you enough.

Nick

Day 15. The one after the one that nobody read.

Turns out only one person read yesterdays post... good to know I'm talking to myself eh? Hello future self who's reading this at the end of the summer, you're more tired, more tan, and hopefully wiser than I am right now. I envy you... and at the same time, you poor poor fellow, you have to go home and I still have a 6 more weeks of this.

Lake day was a whopping success! I managed to get through the whole day without getting fried. Which is really impressive when you factor in the fact that due to my weight loss over the last year I'm not morbidly embarrassed to not wear a shirt on lake days... although I might have to start again because there is this joke going around that I'm always wearing a white t-shirt even when I'm not wearing any shirt at all. Gotta love being a pasty white guy with crazy tan lines eh? Although... it could be worse, at the beginning of the summer last year I was completely pasty white... so progress yeah?

Today was a good day, I swam alot, had some great conversations and generally got to frolic with some incredibly awesome people all day. (some of them were even staff!) I also got a note from a brother in christ from back home today and it was incredibly cool to hear how things are back home. (thanks clark, you're a champ)

Anyway, today is a short one. If you're my lone reader that already read yesterday... sorry. If you're everyone else, go read yesterday.

oh yeah, prayer requests. Pray for my general muscle fatigue level. I had to dose up on ibuprofin for the first time this summer today and it was a bit shocking how big of an effect it had.

Peace!
-Nick
p.s. odd that after saying that only one person read yesterdays that I write a post with a bunch of questions... meh...
p.p.s. I love comments on these and read every one (even if I don't reply)

Day 14. If joy is contagious we've all got a fever. (and might need a cowbell)

I find it encouraging that no matter what God has led us through in our past when we come to camp he uses all of that expertise and experience here. For just a tiny beginning I had to do some super basic computer networking today, and also am fairly regularly asked to do sound stuff (despite our setup being a nightmare) it's cool to see that those skills and passions aren't checked at the door they're carried on board for this crazy ride. It is also good to note that we also have an older gentleman acting as a counselor this week who is incredibly good with sound equipment and it has been fun to learn a few new tricks from him.

Anyway, this morning we had an "all camp scavenger hunt thingie" which involved each group going through a series of 8 stations and collecting the signatures of all the staff working those stations. I don't know what all of them entailed but ours was incredibly simple, enjoyable, and surprisingly seemed fun for the kids. Allow me to explain, me and my fellow wrangler Noah were told to saddle our horses and to hide from the kids, if the kids were able to find us we were allowed to make a request/demand of them and then send them on to the next station with signature on hand. (they were required to have a staff or kid act as the autograph book). We had a blast zipping around camp and eventually all the groups did catch up to us and were given a signature and sent on their merry way skipping and singing the song home, home on the range (our demand).

After we were done with our station we swung by the mud pit (it is exactly what it sounds like) where one of our comerades was playing a rousing game of simon says. simon says sit down... *squish* and so on and so forth. Anyway, also at this station was one of that gals on staff and she had the largest grin I have ever seen on her face, (anatomically I don't think it could have been any larger) and she looked over and said to us "this is my job! God is SO good!". I couldn't agree more and I hope you can see that in what I write here.

We did a few trail rides this afternoon and despite using sunscreen I apparenlty didn't reapply in the proper interval and am slightly sunburned. Keep that in your prayers, sunburns make me tired, tired makes me grumpy, and grumpy makes me bad at this job.

hmm... oyez the stories I remembered today that I havn't recorded here yet.

-At the tack barn we have two cats that are not cuddly cats, they're working animals and their lot in life is to be fearsome hunters so we don't have to set mousetraps. Well... when we arrived they didn't have names (at least to our knowledge) and we didn't want to risk our fearsome duo being named something like buttercup and lily so we decided the only course of action was to preemtively name them ourselves. Suffice it to say, Chuck and Norris are still fearsome creatures.

annnd there was another one but I have forgotten it, I suspect most of my readers (all mysterious 16-24 of you) know that this is fairly normal...

Anyway, Lake day tomorrow! Pray for clear skies and soft winds, functioning boats and whatnot.

-Nick

Day 13. More random stories since mondays are intense and my brain doesn't from coherent connections anymore and that's why this title is super long. (and probably will not represent the contents of this post)

Monday monday monday... A mixture of garfieldesque loathing, little kid on christmas morning excitement, and the trepidation that comes with the regular change in vision and group dynamic that goes with a host of new volunteers for this week of camp. Today was no exception...

Today we woke up and were greeted by the happy sight of all of the horses in the pen, thus saving us the trouble of saddling and going to search for horses. We did manage to get our devotion time in before we went down there and thus it was a spiritually smooth morning as well as physically.

[intermission to go talk to jenni tibbs]...
and now I lost that train of thought buuut stories! as promised!

This weekend I discovered that when I was a teenager doing camps like this... odds are I annoyed my elders when they were resting by recharging and being quiet and I was recharging by being with my friends and being wild and crazy. It's a good reminder, but the whippersnappers have too much energy.

Today after lunch I was waiting for the last bus to unload and a small child came up to me and said "I drank too much water and it hurts" so I sat him down and tried to figure out what exactly was the issue. (after the fact I found out someone had encouraged him to eat his food incredibly swiftly thus resulting in him overeating and whatnot) Probably the second or third question I asked him was "do you feel like you might throw up" at which point he looked at me and started to nod, halfway through the nod his mouth opened up and a stream of vomit shot out and hit me. Sometimes this job is amazing... sometimes you get covered in vomit.

Today when we were out riding we had a group of kids on horseback and a storm front blew over showering us with cold rain... the kids were a bit frustrated and started to complain. This lasted until we told them "we're in wyoming, and cowboys ride in the rain." Immediately the group perked up and started to loudly exclaim over how they were the toughest ride and would have the best story to tell about riding in the rain.

these are but the tip of the iceberg... I'm already losing the memory of others and to be honest I don't have time to record more that I do remember... Suffice it to say that this is an incredible place, cold rain and vomit and all.

-Nick

Day 12. The one in which I write a super short update.

Today was a good day. Filled with good conversations, good food, and whatnot. Gotta wake up early so i'm gonna use a get out of jail card on this one. More tomorrow.