I'm on my weekend break borrowing Jaws of Life's Mac. Camp is wonderful.

God tends to do this at Pine Cove... PC puts you in a position out of your comfort zone where you are not prepared and dont really know what you're doing and then gives a lot of responsibility in it. So you pretty much cant do it yourself; maybe you can push through a week of it but not 6 wks. You have to rely on God so your faith inescapably grows. Two summers ago it was being a horse wrangler (I had never done anything with horses before that summer's training and I was full time teaching elementary kids how to ride and keeping them safe at camp), now it's working on Chaos. i got here to find out that the girl above me got incredibly sick- pray for her- and had to leave so I got promoted to kitchen director. I have never worked on workcrew at pine cove, nor have I ever really worked in a commercial kitchen style spot in such a time crunch before. so i have 10 or so people under me and i have to tell them what to do and get it all done on time from getting the food on clean dishes within proximity to their forks and getting done all those behind the scenes things that everyone including myself has always thought just magically appears like empty trash cans, toilet paper and filled soap dispensers, and setting up and breaking down tables and decorations. Sometimes I have to close my eyes and pretend like I am not touching something that I am scooping out of a drain or scraping off of a plate with my fingers. haha. It's all wonderfully humbling. Through the experience so far I have had a scary wakeup call that I am mostly glad to have had. I am not as good of a leader as I thought I was. I am not very decisive, consistent, procedural, or precise as the person that does this job really should be. I had to learn the ropes and figure out how the kitchen functions and how each theme night is run this week, so i will give myself a little bit of slack for that, but I am having a rough time and feel slightly discouraged but motivated. I have to be ready to run a classroom in less than a month! All those traits and more are crucial to be an affective teacher. So I am glad that I am realizing this now and getting this practice and preparation for being in a leadership role.

The other thing is my foot. I am having to learn how to express myself in ways other than with my body- which is interesting and slightly confining. Things are going well, I can walk and scurry in the brace now which is so good- I have to ice it 3-4x a day and I epsom salt it and do daily exercises to improve flexibility and I expire and have to elevate it within the last 5 minutes of clean up every meal- good timing. The doc said I wont be able to dance or climb until October. I found myself journaling about how I felt about it the other day and then caught myself learning a lesson. I feel like I am less exciting to the campers and my peers here because I can't jump and dance or run or play frisbee. I wrote down, I don't feel exciting enough.

Would i be more exciting if i could jump and dance? Would that make me more confident? OMG, Does my confidence come from within me?!! My confidence should come from the Lord and be IN the Lord, not myself.

Menomona (a sr counselor) said in a sermon this this week "Your identity determines your activity, your activity does not determine your identity." My identity should be in Christ and not in myself and definitely not in what I do. Well that is an incredible relief actually. I dont have to strive for that myself. And if I do choose to put that burden on myself anyway, then I am not showing Christ to those around me the way that I should. I do not want to be a woman that is that focused on myself or feels like I have to strive to maintain some "adequate" level of self confidence for the rest of my life. And I don't want to grow up to be one of those middle aged women that has overdone hair and makeup and is still upset about looking old and overly concerned with matters of the world or trying to be some sexy trophy wife thing. I want to be a peaceful spirited women filled with the Lord's contentment and joy and peace and pouring that into other people, Centered in God' s grace and truly seeing myself as that beautiful woman that God made me, not worried about my external appearance or how "exciting" i am coming off as, and supported by a man that uplifts me in those things. I am praying about this- i am far from attaining it. So camp is a blessing. and the girls that I am working with are so splendidly wonderful beautiful blessing women of God! Oh I so excite to be here! Okay I love you all. Have a wonderful week!