A good friend of mine and I had begun preparation on a camp geared towards high school teenagers. The camp is usually about 1 week long and is affliated with a church group that I am involved with. We've enjoyed working together, yet had to cancel this particular camp session this year due to low numbers. In our planning we've found that groups deciding to join a camp weigh a whole set of factors that in the end steer them away.

There are other camp sessions at this location, and they have been offered for years. Most of the sessions target age groups, although one targets music & singing. The camp I was involved with is an age group that is actually contained within the age group of one other camp that meets later in the summer. We're finding groups choose to send their whole crew to the all-inclusive camp so they can consolidate trips, volunteers, and costs. We're also finding that the success of the music-themed camp is great as well.

We're thinking of ideas to revamp the format of our camp to work with today's families. In my opinion, it can't be the same as any of the other existing camps since groups are choosing to add events to their calendars that work with the American family schedule, with budgets, and that offer something unique enough to merit the effort to attend. We'll run some ideas by the camp operations to see what people think.

I don't know that everyone involved with the operations of the camp sessions would agree with me, but I see that some innovation for today's youth are in definite order.

Pondering...

I just got back from this year's "All-Teen" camp session, a weeklong excursion involving junior AND senior high youth. It was an amazing week filled with spiritual power and growth (and only a few injuries). I have many great memories from attending this camp as both a camper and a staff person, and this year only added to those. Highlights from my week at camp (in random order):

+ I won a game of Risk (I also lost one).

+ I got to hang out with some good friends that I have not seen in a while.

+ I dug into the Word of God and listened to today's youth talk about true Christian fellowship from a fresh perspective.

+ I watched youth learn how to make communication succeed and how to make it absolutely fail.

+ The format was excellent and brought a lot of disparate people together for interesting tasks that taught cooperation and fellowship on many levels.

+ I saw teenagers change and grow.

+ I got to play basketball, volleyball, ping pong, and kicked a hack around.

+ I got sore for a day or two.

+ I got to sleep in 1 day.

+ I got to stay up really late 2 nights.

+ I had one rough day.

+ I floated around with Scott in a canoe for a bit while he caught 12 fish.

+ I learned a Russian card game called "Duroc".

+ I watched one of our youth group members fall on his back from 8 feet or so in the air. He's ok now, but we were worried about him.

+ I saw another person's stitches on the bottom of their foot from an unlucky run-in with a bolt on the camp dock.

+ I sang until my throat hurt.

+ I had good discussions about forgiveness and love.

+ I opened the wooden slats on our cabin (they double

Over all, it was a great time. I was very relaxed and it felt good to be a support person on the staff. I don't think I've recovered yet!