Camp 3

AGAIN, JUST FOUND THIS!

NO IDEA WHY I NEVER PUBLISHED IT!!

So this past week has been and gone and boy am i glad it's over! Not that I didn't love any of the teens that came to camp this week because i truly did but just that it was really hard dealing with some of the attitudes and then on top of that trying to be the best counsellor i could be.

Btw, i'm sorry to those people who have been missing my blogs but we don't really get much time to blog as our breaks during the day aren't long enough to sit down and email/blog so i do it on the weekend when i have more time and last weekend we were all in San Francisco!

So my cabin were tops - just really hard! lol....i think you can pretty much determine what your week is going to be like judging by the first day where i had to sit one of my campers down and chat to her about her attitude.

I think being at teen camp is as close as i wanna get to having my own teenage daughters. NO THANKS!

We had object skits everynight where the cabins would put together skits based on a sentence and an object given to them by the program staff. That was alot of fun and one of the cabins even did theirs at the talent night which was a really encouraging thing for them!

Then one night we had kebabs and my cabin was on meal prep for this and it just turned ugly resulting in Lizz (fellow aussie, and program staff) sitting down with my cabin and having to sternly talk to them!

There are always one or two really well-behaved girls and then there are ALWAYS some girls who don't 'like you' and will do everything humanly possibly to make your week miserable! hahaha......

What sustained me was fully relying on God for eveyrthing i needed and i have never known such faithfulness. In fact i have never been in a situation where i've had to rely on God as much as this week! One night i went to bed absolutely smiling - couldn't wipe it! Because the day had been a real battle and it ended with absolute resolution, everyone went to bed loving eachother and saying good things about eachother and i couldn't stop thanking God for being faithful, for loving us, for holding us in his hands, for having his hand upon our week.

Something else that astounded me was how open the campers were in my cabin - where they lacked politeness, they made up for it by being open and honest with me, something that i value extremely importantly in any relationship as being a form of communication! There were times where each of them bared their souls to me and i had a glimpse of who each girl was and where they were coming from!

In some cases it broke my heart to have to say goodbye to them knowing the situations they'd be facing when they returned home! But it made it that much more urgent for me to declare the good news to them and to teach them ways to make it last and stick, letting them know of a God they can hold onto when everything else is so unstable around them! I'm loving the opportunities God is presenting to me to grow and learn new things, to be stretched like i never imagined!

Thursday night i broke down and pretty much crumbled under the pressure - embarressing! But the enemy is really good at filling your head with questions like, 'what are you doing here?' 'you're not a counsellor' 'you're crap at this job' 'you should go home' blah blah blah.....and i guess i started listening to it. But when you think things like that and crumble, all you want to do is ring someone you know and just cry and at the time it was something i couldn't do. But the staff here is so amazing that i was able to pull through and keep going.

Now i'm looking back at the end of the week and am seeing it was no-one but God that pulled me through and he just used people to touch my heart and he embraced me through them. He keeps me here under his wing stretching me. He is awesome!

This week has passed and God has once again been faithful and i praise him for all the times with my cabin that i had to share his love with them!

Alisha xoxo