AHH!!!!!!  I just wrote like half of this frickin' thing and then it all got screwed up!  AHHH!!  STUPID LINK!!!  So, that means i get to start over, again, part III!

Anyway...so after capture the flag free time came again! And here we present the great and awesome vision of gaming legend: level 7!  I went back to the cabin and met up with Steven, Loren, Justin, Darrin, and Andy and off we went to find a spot to settle down and play the great game of champions.  Now, let me explain the essence of this glorious game.  So, the basic premise of the game is SPOONS.  In SPOONS everyone begins with 4 cards and continually passes a single card until someone is able to attain four of the same card.  At this point the one who has the four cards quickly grabs a spoon (or, for this game, touches their nose) and everyone else follows suit whenever they notice and the slowest loses.  Well, no game presented to us from Steven and Darrin could ever be this simplistically made.  No no, of course, there must be twists and consequences.  In level 7, if you lose a hand of the game (meaning you were the slowest to touch your nose) you would move up one level.  The one who reached level 7 first would be the loser.  However, the instant that someone reached a higher level than other players, that player must be completely ignored and disregarded.  Their entire existence must not be recognized.  If someone of lower level recognizes them in any way, they too would move up to that same level.  Thus, if someone lost every hand and moved up to level 6 and another player accidentally acknowledged him, the other player would also become level 6.  What then is the consequence of reaching level 7?  Well, the one who first reaches level 7 becomes subject to whatever scheme or dare that the other players decide, regardless of how shameless or grotesque.  (yeah!  Go blue team!)  Anyway, so we ended up settling down to play in a covered table and, even though I didn’t lose many actual hands, somehow I was just horribly bad at ignoring people.  Luckily for me, there were those that were even worse than myself (yeah for Grace kids!).  I got all the way up to level 5 but, by then, Andy had already reached level 7.  (before I go on, I’d just like the point out some of the highlights of the game including Steven’s nipple slap in Darrin’s face and our group flash on Loren) Well, being the kind and caring people that we are, we all decided that he should have some ice cream…snorted up his nose.  We went and purchased him a nice oreo ice cream sandwich and filled up a long straw-ful of oreo ice cream and in one heavy *sniff* up it went.  Luckily there were not medical complications but Andy did cough up cookie parts for quite awhile after and mention something about all his food having a slight oreo flavoring. 

            Well, never a group to dodge danger, we all sat down for a second game.  Barn replaced Justin who had to go on his one-on-one and we played another tense game.  Now this one was a close game.  Me, Barn, Loren, and Andy were all at level 6 when the final hand was played and, wouldn’t you know it, Barn and Loren tied as the slowest to touch their noses.  How do you break a tie?  Well, rock-paper-scissors of course!  And well, what can you say about those Grace boys?  They just lose at everything!  So Barn lost and to properly understand his dare you have to know about the little war going on in the guy’s cabin.  You see, me, Barn, Andy, Steven, Justin, Loren, and Max were all in the same cabin (Kevin was too but didn’t room with us) and we all shared one bathroom.  Being the good and courteous person that Andy is, whenever he found it necessary to excrete certain unpleasant waste products he always elected to utilize Darrin’s bathroom so as not to harm his fellow cabin-mates’ nasal cavities with any foul odors.  Darrin, finding it necessary to retaliated for this kind-hearted act, then chose unload his own waste upon our own toilet (without flushing) thus inciting what is now to be known simply as the Poopy Wars.  Steven and Loren couldn’t leave this great injustice un-responded to and so they combined forces and each separately cleansed their digestive tracts out into Darrin’s toilet in succession without flushing. 

            Anyway, back to the dare.  Now, what could be a worse poop-related offence that we could inflict upon Darrin other than the Steven-Loren team-up no-flush attack?  Well, what if Barn just didn’t utilize the toilet at all?  What if he just, I dunno, removed his unwanted waste in say, darrin’s OTHER container for unwanted waste?  That’s right, Barn went poopy in Darrin’s trash can!  And I’m not going to lie, when I first walked into the cabin after, there was a rancid and disgusting stench unlike anything else that had spread throughout the cabins and into the halls.  Completely revolting?  Yes.  But funny?  Definitely!

            Haha, anyway, so after free time we all went to dinner and after dinner I found myself again drawn to a certain little perch with a certain group of ever-pleasant out-of-state-ers.  That spot, those people, something in there held a certain undying magnetism and there was always goodness in our conversation.  Whether commenting on Joe-Z’s soda-related shirt (when she couldn’t even tell the difference between coke and pepsi…the nerve!) or eating very azn candy or even when I broke Wayne’s ankle (ok, twisted…by pushing him off of the handrail…but he was ok afterwards and I did apologize profusely and speaking of apologizing profusely…sorry again to miss Noelle who I inadvertently…pushed down during capture the flag resulting in a very torn up leg…sorry!) or even their constant error in remembering my name (geez, they kept calling me Jeffrey!), there was just a sense of…light-hearted goodness to it all, and they all made me smile with some kind of authenticity that I might have lost somewhere along the line (probably somewhere between “welcome to in n out!” and “have a good day!”). 

            So, what I forgot to mention was that just before capture the flag, Jon Liu had stolen my bag and removed my nametag before i was able to retrieve it and I didn’t notice its absence until long after.  (I also forgot to mention the whole pickle stealing incident during the first meal…darn you darrin and niece jas!)  At camp, losing your nametag means one thing and one thing only, great idiocy awaits you at the next service.  To explain the content of this great wonder of humiliation, I must first explain the icebreaker for that night.  So, a member from each team was called up and 7 different kinds of baby food were presented.  So obviously, not knowing what each baby food product was, each person needed to have a small taste and name the contents of the mulch sitting so tantalizingly before them.  So we played and I do believe good team blue lost again (go blue team anyway!!) although the single highlight of the event was definitely Terrence’s ‘Herman’ answer to what flavor it was.  Blue team was just cool.  If nothing else, if not the fastest or the strongest, I think we were definitely the most interesting of the teams.  I mean, from baby-food taster Terrence to Speedstar Wayne to “Gets coke and pepsi mixed up” Joe-Z to Duststorm (that is his whole name now, he is now Dust Storm, forever), we just had a lot of interesting characters on our team this year, and it was fun, even losing…all the time.  Haha. 

             Anyway, so yeah, after they finished their baby-food eating, obviously they couldn’t let all that baby food go to waste.  Enter Jeremy’s stolen name tag.  Somehow for this service I was the only one missing something (go figure…and go blue team!) and so good Herman and Kimball called me up, mixed some of each of the baby foods together and had me eat it.  But I mean, come on, where’s the challenge in that?  Being me and knowing the possible positive consequences for my team I not only finished their little bowl of baby food in disgustingly fast time (seriously, even Enoch must have been proud of me), I also managed to polish off every single bottle of the stuff.  Spick and span.  I’m not going to lie…it was completely revolting (other than the apple sauce…and the peas weren’t that bad…seriously tho, I mean, for babies…how could they eat that stuff…no wonder they are spitting up all over the place…geez, those Gerber jerks…), but I mean, these are the lengths to which I will sacrifice for the team (baby food down the shirt and all!)!!   

So yeah, we had service, and again, it was good, the message was forceful and challenging, and then we had worship.  Worship really moved for a lot of people.  Everybody was down on their faces, pouring out their hearts in worship, praise, and confession to God.  Everyone wanted to hear God’s voice and frankly, again, I didn’t feel it.  I mean, I heard God’s voice, but somehow, His message to me seemed pretty short and succinct, and then I found myself wide-eyed in a sea of kneeling tears.  But then, again, I looked around me, at my brothers in Christ, passionate, pouring out their hearts to God, and I could not help but feel God’s love gushing through me.  All I could do was set my hands upon them and pray with them, pray for them, be with them, and there was something amazing in this connection.  I know I’ve said it before, but I think that so much of the time I have been so selfish and self-focused, as if I wished to hog God’s love all for myself, but here, in this time, I looked around, and I understood why it is that God’s greatest commandments were to love God and to love each other.  The two are almost one; we cannot love God without loving each other and we cannot love each other in the fullness and realism of love, if we do not love God.  I think I can finally believe that love is not a thing of human design, it is celestial in nature, and we love because God loves. 

So yeah, we went back to our cabins had a big group cabin devotion with all of the guys and then knocked out.

Day three over.

So it turns to day four, and this is where you start to feel the end nearing.  I mean, you just feel your time being gnawed away, like some termite or vermin, inching closer to you and this present time.  But then, at the same time, there is something routine to it all too, as if nothing is different, but something is.  I woke up, went to breakfast, and this morning I plopped down on a chair in the covered patio area where Nate and Phuc-An (AK) later found me.  I mean, we didn’t talk about much, but we just kinda screwed around and it was pretty cool.  AK sang to us old-time love songs and Koreans and other people walked by us and gave us weird looks like we were crazy…but I think there something good and fun on craziness.  If everyone acted normally all the time, now what fun would there be in that kind of world, eh?  Jon came out and he asked, almost jokingly, if anybody wanted to help type up the songs.  I told him I’d do it so I followed him into the chapel and started getting to work (although Bryan’s comp is gay and froze up the first time…).  Obviously, I had ulterior motives.  I mean, I couldn’t let a perfectly good opportunity to advertise the goodness of blue team (on the screen no less) slip by!  So I typed up all the songs, and snuck in my own little (Go BLUE TEAM!) message.  Of course Joan found it and had to add something about Red team…jerk…haha jk.  We worshipped again and Pastor Joe spoke again and he said powerful things, controversial things, things that just made you want to get up and be pissed…but there was so much truth in it all.  I know I said I wasn’t going to say much about the sermons, but really, every time he spoke, he pushed me.  I felt angry, frustrated, targeted, because so many of the things he said were true of myself, but he was just so truthful, so honest, so uncensored, that it moved.  Our God is not a censored God, He is a crazy God after all right?  I mean, things of God should not coexist so easily with things of this world right?  I think my sister told me once that our God is a crazy God and people should know that God controls your life when they look at you and think you’re crazy for what you do.  The things of God are not things that make sense to the people of this world.  But I think therein lies the great truthfulness of it all.  I mean, if God is God, then why should what He does follow within the logic of this world right? 

            Well anyway, the service went really long so we didn’t have workshops (but it was ok because the nooma videos were all really good…especially the silence one).  We basically went from service to lunch and then off to water games!  The first game (the classic water balloon popping game) was sadly one-sided.  That green team planned so well, they all just stayed together until the end, they totally owned us all.  Blue team, of course, got out first (good effort tho Dust Storm!) and I might have been the earliest person out, haha but that’s ok.  Then we played this shoot-the-…pill thing (I had suddenly forgotten the name of it…it fizzes when it touches water and stuff…?) game that didn’t really work but that’s ok.  Afterwards we had the annual water fight (that always just “spontaneously” happens because of everyone’s desire to not get wet but to also get everybody else wet) which is always fun, especially with Fun Fun tackling Woody and Steve throwing Randon in the mud…haha.  Everyone got out of there really muddy and disgusting and we all broke off into our teams for skit prep.  Now, I’m not going to lie to you, the skits were pretty bad.  I mean, I know for ours, we had two ideas, went with one, and it was bad.  I can say that because it was my idea…haha.  I remember just sitting at the end of planning, looking over at Chris (haha, I called him Max and my spot on the Chris Meter went down…aww…haha) and we were both just like “oh man…so weak sauce…” haha.  Luckily for us, everybody else’s skits sucked too!  So yay!  I think I’m just going to blow through the highlights of the skits now (even though they didn’t happen til the next day) since there were so few anyway!  So…yellow team: (I thought this was the best one by far…but that’s ok) Steven as a guy that really really really needs to go to the bathroom (with all this…random stuff thrown in that distracted him from the bathroom I guess, but it was funny!).  Green team: no highlights.  Red team: one highlight, Kevin and AK as nooma man and nooma kid at the end.  Purple team: Chris Tom as Kimball and Kyle with his hair and tied up.  Blue team (and I might just be a little biased here…GO BLUE TEAM!): Wayne as Russell Peters, Brian dive-tackling me, Chris as the random pooping guy and me eating his poop (wow, baby food AND poop…mmmm), and, of course, DUST STORM (yeah Jeffrey!  Only time I am saying his name)!!!   hahaha…dust storm was funny…haha.  Ok, so after skit prep we eat dinner and go to worship and service again.  Then we have campfire, which was more low-tone than most camps, which is still good I guess.  I think it was more light-hearted than most, but I think there’s a lot of value in that because emotion fades so quickly, if we learn it and it becomes ingrained in our minds and hearts, maybe it won’t fade away, you know?  If what we have taken away is linked so completely with our emotions, it will be gone as quickly as it as come, but if it is something cognitive, doesn’t it have that much more value?  Anyway, at camp fire I really really really really didn’t mean to share…really.  But you know, its just what people say, makes me feel as if God is tugging at my heart to say something.  And this year, I think God was showing me what it meant to care and have fellowship with others, and in doing this, what it meant to be a leader, and maybe even a counselor next year.  I think I have been scared of making that step; scared of all the expectations and scared of what it would mean for me.  But in seeing these people and loving these people all around me…its as if what Cal and Jon prayed for me has been answered in some ways.  Cal told me he prayed that I might be able to stand up and become a leader in the church and Jon prayed that God might give me the strength to break through, and I think, on many levels, this camp helped me to do that.  This year I guess I learned to see others and to really fellowship and really commune with my fellow believers in a way completely different, radically different than ever before.  And for that, I am glad (even if it cost me money out of my own pocket).  Anyway, so most of the rest of the time was devoted to signing affirmation sheets (isn’t it ironic how signing affirmation sheets sometimes feels like it takes us away from spending more time with the people whose sheets we are signing?  Not that I don’t like the wall of affirmation, because Its really uplifting to me every time I read those and whatnot) and saying our final hellos and goodbyes.  We had skits the next morning but I already talked about those.  And on the bus trip back I slept in the aisle because the chairs felt cramped.  And that’s really all there was.  It was a wonderful camp: one where I met a world of people who have so quickly become something dear to me.  And really, that’s what camp should be about.  We do learn some things, but how much can we grow and learn at camp?  We learn and grow during the year, each and every day that we spend with God.  At camp, we fellowship with the believers all around us, and we share in God’s love and blessings.  I’ve met a lot of people and each has given something to me of great value, and so, I can say, it was a wonderful camp.  Maybe I will never see some of these people again, but for the time they have spent within my life, I am forever enriched.  Wayne, Milly, B, Jessica, Ping, Beata, Band-Aid, and of course miss Joe-Z, maybe none of you will ever read this, and maybe I will never meet you all ever again, but I thank you for the value you have instilled into my life with your presence, however short.