Girls' Camp

I'm sure everyone wonders where I've been. I've kind of been wondering the same thing. :) Actually, it's just been SUPER crazy and busy....which is probably a good thing since I tend to go crazy with anticipation the last few weeks of pregnancy. The insanity has brought me to week 39 and hopefully I can make it the last few days without making everyone nuts!

Very few people probably know about the challenges we had with girls' camp this year. We were called to YW almost a year ago. Things were hard, the girls had a lot of challenges, but we have seen the Lord's hand in many things. We have made some serious progress and felt like we were truly blessed in our efforts to help love and teach these girls. That said, the last month, things have fallen apart. Why we needed to have extra adversity, I will never know, but that is what happened. The YW president came down with mono, the 1st counselor is struggling with some serious personal trials, I'm the wild card pregnant 2nd counselor that didn't even know if I could make it to camp and the secretary was a month ahead of me in her pregnancy - definitely not going to make it to camp since she was due June 28. We have two awesome advisors (one position has yet to be filled) and had a camp director, but still things were weird. That said, we were still optimistic...until our cabin fell through 6 days before camp. Yep, 6 days. We didn't know what to do...postpone, cancel, hope to find a camp site. We had a late night meeting to figure everything out and the next day had secured a camp site. We split up the new responsibilities that came with tent camping and went to work...and it was WORK! But it all came together in the end.

I won't attempt to give you the journal version of camp. It's way too long for anyone to want to read, but it was amazing. We made the camping location work (even though it was more like camping in weeds than on grass, we had a lake right there to cool off in every day, there was a grassy picnic area for the obstacle course and other activities, and overall there were very few real "bumps" we hit once we were there. I attempted to sleep over the first night and got NO SLEEP. My pregnancy hips just couldn't take it. I tried a cot, an air mattress and ended up in my van with the seat laid down. But I was able to get through the next day fine without sleep (I was definitely blessed physically during camp) and then went home to sleep at night after that. Thankfully we were only 45 minutes away so making the commute several times was no big deal. The past year I have had 2-3 Beehives, but I gained 9 more between March and June this year. Half of them are inactive and two of them weren't even baptized, but it was AMAZING having so many little Beehives to mentor and nurture. Everyone thought I was crazy going to camp this far in my pregnancy, but I felt like I should and now I know why. I was supposed to be there for those girls. It was meant to be. I wouldn't have wanted to miss the opportunity to bond with them and teach them in such a unique way and I know it wouldn't have been the same experience for them without my presence at camp either. We stayed at Echo Lake and they all fondly started referring to the baby as "Baby Echo" thinking she could be born any minute up there. So funny! Marcos quickly informed me that Echo was definitely out of the name game, but I have a feeling the nickname will stick for years to come. I overheard a couple of my Beehives in the bathroom talking. It was pretty funny. It went something like this. "When Baby Echo is our age, we'll be like 25 and be telling her all about how she was with us during camp and how she and her mom were swimming and doing crazy things like hula hooping and playing tug-o-war. She's going to love those stories." Isn't that cute? I could've died laughing! My belly was the endearing mascot of camp and got plenty of rubbing and talking to during the whole ordeal. One night after dinner, the baby was bouncing all over the place. The girls gathered around to watch the alien movement take place and couldn't believe it. Pretty entertaining, I suppose. :)

Anyway, here are a few pictures to show just how much fun we had. Our theme was "The Amazing Race" and the girls were broken into countries - China, Mexico and Germany. The challenges were fun, activities were great, the lake close by turned out to be a huge blessing and the testimony meeting could not have been more inspiring. To think about what God has done with this group of girls in only a year is truly awesome!

Look how much stuff we got in the back on my van - INSANE!

Notice the bottom left hand picture - 4 leaders against 17 girls. We held our own, but lost in the end. But look at me holding down the back of the tug-o-war. Extra pregnancy weight is good for something after all I guess. :)