Adventure Stories

Cooking grilled cheese over a "hobo stove,"
a survival cooker fashioned from a tin can

When's the last time you made grilled marshmallow sandwiches over a hobo stove?

Or practised twisting rabbit snares in a tipi during a hailstorm?

Or spent the night camping in a caboose, or on the top of a climbing wall tower?


Was it the last time you counseled at summer camp? Sweet! Me too!

A hut I built with one of my wrangler friends.
It definitely has some Ugandan influence...

This summer has definitely been a good one for cultivating memories--not to mention jungle skills. It's 10-12-year-old camp right now, in which the campers get to sign up for a "focus skill" to learn their favourite activity in-depth. I'm instructing Wilderness, meaning that I now get to spend thirteen hours a week teaching kids survival skills. We build solar stills to extract water from grass, make sample snares, bake and grill over the fire, lash logs for shelters, build survival kits...

Feathering a stick to make tinder

Of all the sessions I've taught so far, my favourite one happened during a thunderstorm. Since one of the campers was terrified of thunder, we held the activity inside the cabin. Lacking the usual hatchets, knives, matches and firewood, I instead spent a good twenty minutes demonstrating bandana uses: bandaging, pouch-folding, slingshotting cotton balls...

The Caboose, furnished with bunks to camp in

"Tell us an adventure survival story!" someone then asked. "Like the time you were eaten by an alligator or something!"

Well, I didn't have an alligator story. But I DID have a malaria one! The rest of the hour then, was spent in missions adventure storytelling. About me, about the pioneers of old, about the miracles happening to the persecuted church today... It was SO cool to see the wonder in their eyeballs as they heard the true testimonies of God's power, and the daring lives of His followers.

But the power of storytelling doesn't always go from leader to camper. Sometimes it's the other way around. Last Monday as we were making s'mores around our Snack-Out Night fire and sharing testimonies, one little girl put up her hand to say something. She began telling her story, one of immense heartbreak. How could a life that young know so much tragedy? I asked, beginning to feel weighed down until God reminded me "It's alright...it's not your job to carry these kids' burdens. I got this." And sure enough, He did.

On the last night of camp, after we'd gotten everyone finally settled in bed as opposed to bounding wildly across the room singing songs from Frozen, I read from biblical prophecies for devotions. We started in Isaiah, about Jesus, and ended with the Revelation passage about the new heaven and the new earth. As I read, the cabin door creaked open and this girl and another counselor walked in from where they'd been talking after evening chapel.

"Can I tell you what I saw, after?" she asked. I nodded and kept reading. Once we were through, and before I went out to get Bibles for some of the campers, I waited for her to tell her story. What I heard made my jaw drop.

"I heard God tonight," she said quietly. "He said my name and told me I don't have to be scared anymore. And then I saw Him. He opened a big wooden door, and it was very bright inside. I entered and saw my brother (who had been killed in an accident). He said he was ok, and that he was saved. We talked, and then Jesus said it was time to go, but I'd see Him in me dream..."

Your God is alive and well. He's been here for some crazy stuff at camp, and not all the stories make it to this blog. Some of the sights I've seen have been hard: outbreaks of anger, effects of hurt, times of warfare. But His victory is there too, and it's been in some of the craziest times so far that I've known it the most. In every hardship and highlight, He's been with us. He is here, and I wouldn't rather be anywhere else.

A Cry in the Night

My guitar is getting some good use: around campfires,
on sleep-outs, waking up campers in the morning...

Thunk.

My hand, barely visible in the darkness, contacted the rough wood-paneled wall. Floundering its way to the left, the hand struck a new surface--one with some give to it.

Ah, the door.

"I--need--to--use--the--wah-shroom!" A small voice beside me whimpered through the blackness.

"We're getting there," I assured her. If only I 
could find the knob!

(It keeps going! Please click "Read More.")

Camp Life Continues

"Jesus is the Son of God?"  The camper turned to me, her eyes wide with incredulous interest.
"I did not know that."

This girl, like so many, is hungry for answers. Satisfying ones. They want to know about people and God and life and death and eternity, but some of them have never encountered a Bible before. The stories of history told therein are entirely new. Other children have had glimpses of Jesus here and there, unanchored fragments


A perfect footprint impression,
outlined in a puddle of residual bug spray

that rotate like loose pieces of a half-missing jigsaw puzzle. Gathering their pieces together, they ask:

"But can't you only be a Christian if you go to a Christian school? That's what my friends say."

"Don't people become angels when they die?"


"Why did God create bad guys?"

(Click "Read More" to Continue)