I don't listen to rap. It kinda bugs me after a while. So why would I suddenly develop a taste for it? WELL. I went to this little place in California called Camp May-Mac for a week. It's an outreach camp for inner-city kids. One day in chapel/Prime Time, we didn't have enough stuff to keep the boys occupied for an hour and 15 minutes. So we turned on some music and let the boys dance their hearts out for 15 minutes with Magic, our resident techno dance instructor. "Ooh Aah" was the one song that we could find on Bobcat's iPod that the kids could dance to and so they played that...about 5 times in a row. It will ALWAYS make me think of Camp May-Mac from now on. :)

Camp May-Mac was SO AWESOME. It was incredibly exhausting, but also just incredible. It was the first time I'd ever been to Camp May-Mac and been full-time activity staff the entire week (without pay, however, LOL :P ). I got to know a lot of the kids on a personal basis, which is exactly what I wanted. I even had my own little fan club, LOL. Pop's and Fuschia's cabins.

Now, you know Californians name their kids crazy weird things, but I should tell you that Pop, Magic, and Fuschia are NOT the real names of the staff there. They are the camp names. My camp name was Sunny. The kids weren't allowed to know our real names until the last day of camp, so we called each other by our camp names. I love my persona Sunny. It's me out of my shell and it's SO awesome.

I don't even know where to begin. I guess I'll explain a bit about what I was doing there. My youth group took teams of people down to May-Mac back in the day (LOL) for a week at a time. We worked as the SWAT team--kitchen staff, mostly, making the food and serving the kids at mealtimes. I went for three summers, when I was 15, 16, and 17. I've wanted to go back ever since I left and this summer I was finally able to! I went back, just me, as a volunteer for a week.

I didn't know what they'd have me do, but I just knew I wanted to go. The age group we had was 9- to 11-year-olds. There were a few 12- and 13-year-olds who were there on accident because their parents thought "junior camp" meant "junior high camp." The kids stay up in the mountains for a week, in cabins with counselors, and they eat three meals a day and have chapel time, activities and games during the day, and Campfire at night, where we sing goofy camp songs and watch skits. That's Camp May-Mac in a nutshell. :) The staff set me up as helping out with the day's activities.

My two biggest duties were helping out with chapel time in the mornings and free time in the evenings. Chapel was THE BEST time of the day. We got to play team-building games and sing worship songs at the top of our lungs with lots of hand motions and jumping up and down, and then listen to Vicky/Snap talk about the Bible. Free time was the especially trying part of the day, because that's the counselors' time off, so we the activity staff have complete control (or complete lack of control) over the kids. But I got close to a bunch of kids through free time because of the volleyball group I played with. They turned into my fan club by the end of the week. :) I know all their names, but I can't disclose them for security purposes. One hilarious little girl called me her best friend forever. One of them asked me, silently, because she spoke very little English and I speak very little Spanish, to help me with one of the crafts. And almost all of them asked me to sign their camp shirts at the end of the week. One girl asked me to help her find her sweatshirt, and at the end of the search said, "You're the best." One girl always said hi to me--nothing else, just a happy little "Hi Sunny!" whenever she saw me. One girl who is the epitome of cuteness said as she sat next to me at campfire, in her sweet little voice, "I like sitting here by you, Sunny." All of them had me sign their camp shirts at the end of the week. :)

Camp was so incredible. I know I touched those kids' lives. And I discovered SO MUCH about myself. I think kids are the world's sifters. They brought out both the best and the worst in me, but the best was the neatest part to discover. With kids I can be the real me, the one unheeded by self-consciousness, and that me is a fun, silly person who honestly loves people and will do it when she feels enabled to. With kids, I felt enabled to love people. I wasn't afraid to hug one girl around the shoulders and hold her close to me when she was crying because she missed home. I wasn't afraid to block out all other distractions and turn my attention solely on one little voice telling me about herself, to be there just for her. I wasn't afraid of being the person to distract a girl who was starting to bug the rest of her cabin. I wasn't afraid to laugh at the silly things people say that don't make sense. I wasn't afraid to get excited about stuff I'm excited about. I wasn't afraid to dance my heart out to the crazy songs we sang in chapel. There's this real person I never knew existed underneath all these thick layers of shyness! There's a person who loves to be goofy and loves to help people. There's a person who can open her heart up and be completely vulnerable and still be loved. I never knew this about myself.

Oh my gosh... THAT'S what I learned about God! Vulnerability. God will love a vulnerable, open heart.

Oh wow.

Early on in the week, Spike, one of the lead guys, handed out sheets with three questions on them that we were to turn in at the end of the week: "What have you learned about God? What have you learned about the kids? What have you learned about yourself?" I got the "yourself" question down pat, and could fill in enough to answer the "kids" question, but I couldn't for the life of me think of what I'd learned about God. I knew I'd learned something through it all, but I couldn't articulate it. That's what writing and talking about experiences does for me. It puts into words things I could never get into words just by thinking about them.

I just can't believe how amazing the week was. How much I learned about myself. All that stuff I was saying earlier--I'm this likable person and I never knew it. My gosh. What have I been keeping from myself for so long?

I am thinking about going back to camp for the whole summer, as activity staff, next year. Next summer is the England/Ireland/Scotland trip, and most people who know me fairly well know that going to England has been a dream of mine ever since I started reading Frances Hodgson Burnett. But next summer, if that trip falls over the time when I'll have the opportunity to be at Camp May-Mac, I'm going to take Camp May-Mac.

I guess this is what it feels like to have your dreams changed. It's not as painful as I thought it would be. I would still like to go to England someday, but May-Mac is here. It's real. It's near. My heart stays at Camp May-Mac whenever I leave. My heart stays with the kids whose lives I change, and my persona Sunny that rests at the camp till I come back. I don't know what that means for the rest of my life. But I know that May-Mac is slowly becoming more important to me than other things in my life.

I want to make a DIFFERENCE in people's LIVES, Lord. And if this is the way to do it... Lay it on me, Father God. I am YOURS forever. If you, God, are this God that is made of the best of the best in people that comes out in places like Camp May-Mac, I'll love you with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and follow you forever. Your precious, precious child, Sunny/Stephanie.

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Edit 2012: What the heck? I missed a minor detail in this long entry about camp! I MET ISAAC. What the heck? How could I forget to journal about that? I guess I put it in my paper-and-pen journal instead.

But just for the record, yeah. He came up to meet me at the camp. :) Don't even ask how we arranged that. I'm still to this day not sure if he came because he wanted to or because he felt obligated to, because Iwanted him to really badly. LOL.

He was only up at the camp for about 2 hours, and we just chatted. I don't remember it being super awkward, although I'm sure it was at times. It's just that I'd been waiting for it for so long, that I wasn't going to let anything mess with the experience, not even embarrassment about awkwardness.

Actually, the most awkward part was probably getting permission from the camp staff (which I was part of) to take a couple hours off to meet my friend. I didn't know how to tell them that I had never met him before and that we were online friends. One girl who was volunteering there with me called him my boyfriend at first, but when I explained it to her that that wasn't the case, she called him my "man-friend" instead. LOL. She's a bit of an odd duck, but funny.

I hate to say this now. But I suppose it's time I admitted it. I was kinda disappointed in the visit. Our conversations weren't as flashy and quick-witted as they were online. Meeting my other Dland friend, Angela, in person had a similar effect--I didn't feel my heart bond to hers like it did online. Isn't it funny how different things can be online vs. in person? Honestly, they'd probably still be good friends of mine if we were "real," in-person friends rather than online friends. It makes me wonder what the Lord's real purpose was for them in my life. I know they both helped me through difficult times. I hope I was in their lives for some purpose too, though, and I wish I knew what those purposes were.

The good part is, I know I will see them in heaven. And I'm pretty sure that'll be better than the greatest potential those friendships had here on earth. :)

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