Remember, Remember the Dream that will Challenge ...

Off to a summer camp I went, yet unlike any other. I've been there before yet nothing like this ever happened last time. The first peculiar thing about this camp is the setting, because unlike most camps in which you go out into the woods to a site that had been set up with a cafeteria, cabins, a pool, a field for sports, and all the "essentials for summer camp," this camp was completely outside that box. Instead of staying in cabins in a forest with 6 - 8 people of your same gender, we stayed on a large ship with what seemed like a miniature city of one-story condos or apartments with 6 - 8 beds in each place: therefore, the living situations remain the same, but the outside is completely different, and there was an occasional second story simply for looking out of the window because it was too small for an actual room. The buildings reminded me of Gleanings for the Hungry's dorm rooms with metal roofing and all of the buildings surrounding a specific open area that had chain-linked fences in between the buildings if there was a break between them.

The sleeping occurred in these dorms, whereas the majority of the campers went ashore on boats that followed a very strict schedule, leaving sometimes around 7:00 or 7:30 in the morning and returning around 15:00 or 16:00 (3:00pm or 4:00pm), so that if you chose to spend your day on the island, then you had to set your alarm for a very early time. It was mostly assumed that people would go ashore because that's where the cafeteria was located. The boats may have gone at a couple other times, but the crucial time for breakfast was the early time.

If you were single, then you would typically stay in one of the dorms with between 3 and 7 other people, and I had a top bunk. I have four friends worth mentioning because they play such an important part at this camp: Chris & Sarah Odell, Kimberly Taylor, and Albert Hung. Chris & Sarah were housed in their own dorm-like room, which had six beds bunkbed style and organized in a U shape. I do not know where Albert stayed but I imagine with his wife and kids in a similar building. Kimberly, though I never saw it, stayed in a room similar to mine but with girls.

In the morning after the first day at camp, some of my friends and I chose for the first time (since last year we had always gone ashore) to stay on board until sometime later in the day perhaps. Come my alarm I awoke slowly and now wishing to respond to the annoying sound that broke my slumber, but I did and I explored the top level of the ship for some time, which had roofed areas (with no walls, just supports) for shade as you walked from the edge of the ship into the city. At some point I found my Love, and it was such a joyous time that we simply held each other closely to ourselves feeling the difference in body heat as her body heat transferred to me and mine to her while our backs were subject to the cool winds that one would find on the deck of a ship. And every so often I would kiss her where my face rested against her soft neck, several little pecks to let her know my love for her, and after a while she would reciprocate those pecks. We held each other for what seemed like half an hour--definitely not long enough!

She then left to do something on the ship and I went wandering again. I came into the open space in the middle of the buildings which had a cloth covering it so that the sun would not burn those sitting amongst the chairs and tables, who ate snacks and played games and talked like all youths within the junior high to college range. I remember walking towards a fence that was leaning a little because it was actually a gate, but locked. And as I approached it, I heard the voice of a friend that I did not see say something like "She's making you do reckless things; the more time you spend with her the less you seem to care about the rules and how you break them," but of course he said it much more pithily than I can replicate, yet all of that was in the meaning of what he said. And I remember denouncing what he said, then trying to find a way to get under the fence, but it had ropes tying it down to the ground perhaps so that people like me could not squeeze underneath.

So giving up on "under", it sufficed for me to find the "over" and there was a break in the extra wires similar to those rows of barbed wire that top a chain-linked fence, and as I crawled up through the break, a little car--the ones that the camp security drives, little electric cars that remind me of the ones on APU, but bigger so that more people could fit inside-- drove by on the little road between the city and a few other buildings, and the girls in the backseat saw me and the guy kept driving but looked as though he was finding a good place to turn around. Now I was in trouble, so what do I do when caught? Make sure that I'm uncaught--I flee!

So I climbed from the top of the fence onto the rooftop and ran from rooftop to rooftop looking down below to see what the security people were doing. I came to a place where there was a small second story and I got on top of that and because of the the precarious location of it, it looked as though I would fall off the roof down to the road that surrounded this building cluster where the security car had stopped, and they were beckoning me to not jump and not be so reckless. As I crawled up and went back the way I came, someone had come out of the window to meet me--Chris Odell. He gave me his hand and we talked for some time there and then walked back to his room talking the whole way.

I wish that I had a tape-recorder in order to record our conversation, because it was so edifying to me. He told me that something he and Sarah do in order to help their faith to grow is to list the things that God has done for them and just verbally affirm them. It was so good, and there was more to it, but I just cannot recall anymore. I do remember though that he said Albert Hung was teaching that night at a Bible study so after going back to my room I thought about going, but didn't really want to.

Then at evening Albert came out and spoke loudly among the dorm rooms to let them know that he was going to start the Bible study, but I noticed that nobody responded. Everyone else had thought the same way I did perhaps, and seeing that he had no one to teach, I went to him and joined him. We walked back to a dorm room and began the Bible study and it was so good again. It was affirming everything about which I had spoken with Chris, and it encouraged me to continue in the things that pleased God. AGAIN, I wish so much that I could remember all the things that Albert shared that night.

Then Sarah came in and got up onto the top bunks of the U-shaped arrangement of beds, and I realized that we were in their room. Chris then came in too, talked with us for a little while and then went up to join Sarah in sitting on top of the beds with a huge blanket covering them while they looked down on us to hear more of what we were saying.

That is the majority of my remembrance, and it is not so strong as I would like, because otherwise I may know better how to seek God, but I am glad to be able to remember as much as I did, and to write it down so that at some point when I re-read my "memories" of this camp, it will challenge me to seek God in the way that I already know: to read His Word, to come to Him in prayer: affirming who He is and what He has done in my life, and requesting of Him on behalf of my beloved family and friends and beautiful young lady (la belle demoiselle).