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At our church we have two groups of Student Leaders, the regular Student Leaders, who are high schoolers, and the Junior Student Leaders, sometimes called the Padawans, who are in middle school. These kids are supposed to help by leading ministries, or for the Padawans to help lead those ministries. My ministry is singing in the Youth Praise Band for Youth Group on Monday nights. They also discuss some more in-depth or controversial doctrines in weekly Student Leadership Meetings. Requirements have gotten more strict this year and include attendance of these meetings, mentorship meetings, and scripture memorization each week.

In the Spring of this year the high school Student Leaders of our church who were available went to a leadership retreat at Cedarkirk, where the Children’s Ministry had been before (with Mom, Amber, Alyssa, and I all attending) for a High School Retreat organized by that camp. Our Youth Director did not have anything to plan or worry about, just getting the small group of us there and back in one piece. This Fall, with a new semester of students and attendance of the biannual retreats now mandatory all but one of the Student Leaders attended a completely different “Retreat” to Southwind camp in Ocala.

Amber went to Southwind for her summer camp, Great Escape, the week following my summer camp, leaving the same day I came back, and apparently our Youth Director struck a deal with someone there about getting us to be the Work Crew for someone else’s retreat at that camp. It turned out that the church who is usually the Work Crew for Great Escape was having a family retreat with around a hundred people that we got to serve.

The whole point of the retreat was for us to learn about serving attitudes and get better at our leadership, communication, and teamwork skills, which we did, although not how we originally thought. Our Youth Director apparently did not expect Work Crew to be quite so much work, but we spent most of our time doing that. We got to serve the food, acting like waiters, asking people if they needed anything, getting them more food, clearing their dishes. We got to clear all the tables entirely, washing them, putting the chairs on them so we could vacuum the entire floor, then resetting everything with new place settings for the next meal. We got to wash and put the dishes away, which was a special job called The Pits. We almost had to cook too, but then four of the kids would have to be working at times when everyone else was off work. Shaun managed to talk our way out of that so we had time for having time all together for talking about the upcoming year and doing an “exercise”. We did a traditional Leadership Retreat exercise that I had not been around for before, which involved a spider-web like net that we had to get the entire group through without touching the net or using the same hole more than once. It took us a while to do it, but we made it eventually on our last attempt before we were going to give up so we had time for something else before dinner. We were very pleased with ourselves, because apparently, the game had not been won by a youth leadership team for several years.

We got some break time also, where we went swimming, played ping-pong, air hockey, and foosball in the game room, and went on the ropes course. The ropes course was two different “rides”, one which was a giant swing where three people were strapped in and rode to the top of the swing’s height with a winch and then released themselves to go swinging back and forth until coming to a stop when the ride operators caught a specific part of the swing and hooked it into an anchor. The other was a jump off of a twenty-five(?) foot tree harnessed onto a belaying rope that was held at the bottom to let you down slowly. Both rides were very fun and I got to ride on each of them before we headed back to get ready for dinner.

The entire trip was entertaining and educational and in my opinion we learned just as many teamwork, communication, and leadership skills being the Work Crew as we did in our exercise. I know we all came back having learned how to work better together and it was a good experience to serve on that trip.

I had the priviledge of attending Fun In The Son summer camp with our youth group this year. It was my first summer camp experience, since the only other away camps I have been to were Snow Camp and the Leadership Retreat at Cedarkirk, and it was a lot different than those trips. For one thing, we only had a four hour trip to get to Jekyll Island, Georgia and we took the church bus, which can hold around forty people. There were only fifteen kids going, plus Shaun and the new Intern, Kristyn Jones as chaperones, so we had plenty of room on the bus for all of us and our stuff.

We stayed at the Oceanside Inn, where most of the kids going to the conference stayed. All of the sports and most of the meals were also at that hotel. The way the rooms worked out I ended up in a room with two freshmen and two double beds, so I got an entire bed to myself. That room connected to the room that had the Intern, the two other freshmen, and another girl. The third girl’s room was quite a bit down the hall, but they had a graduated senior in their room so they were alright. The boys were on the floor below and they also had connecting rooms, with three people in each room, but they only had one queen bed per room.

Because the church bus had to go back to church we were stuck at the hotel a mile away from the convention center, so we had to go beg a ride. We ended up finding one with a group from Faith Presbyterian in Seminole, FL that had a twelve passenger van but only three people, counting the chaperone. They let us ride with them all week until the last program because they had to head back so that they could make it to Great Escape the next day. We ended up including them in a lot of our games when we played things that were not in the regular scheduled tournaments and saved spots in meal lines for them.

None of our teams ended up winning any of the tournaments, although one guy from our group won the 5k, and we did win several games. We had girls’, guys’, and co-ed volleyball teams, co-ed soccer and ultimate frisbee teams, and girls’ and guys’ basket ball teams. The volleyball teams did alright, although I don’t know if the girls actually won any games. The frisbee team lost the first game and got knocked out, so we only had to play that one. I don’t know how the guys’ basketball team did, but my girls played very well. I say my girls because, really, no one else wanted to play girls’ basketball but me. Four girls signed up, but two of them backed out at the last minute, so we had to find someone else to be our third person. It ended up that Molly and Monica were willing to play so that I could. I thanked them both a bazillion times for helping me have fun, but I don’t know how much they enjoyed it. We lost 10-1. I did make our only basket, though I might have made more if it wasn’t “make it-take it” on a half court in the parking lot.

The soccer team did very well, winning their first two games out of three. I was only signed up to play basketball and ultimate, but some of the girls decided they didn’t want to play again, so I got to go in for one of them. That we had at least two girls on the team so we could play in the co-ed tournament. Unfortunately, during the first game my knee was injured when the bottom half of my leg was wrenched sideways. I also got quite a bash to my nose just prior to that. I was in such pain that I had to call a time out to go limp over to the chairs where everybody else was sitting and I was unable to play any more games after that, including the one frisbee game. I was pretty disappointed about this, but I had a really fun time anyway. I am pleased to say that my nose did not sustain any permanent damage, althought it felt like it hurt worse at different points in time and my knee is continuing to improve through exercise. I have played soccer since and, although I am still hesitant to kick with that leg I have regained complete normal use of it.

The theme that our lessons focused on was “Collide”, or how Jesus came to earth and the effect was something that changed the world. The slogan was something about when the ordinary and extraordinary collided. I find this almost ironic, because when my knee got hurt, that is why: someone collided with me hard enough to change the outcome of my week.

Already church is beginning to plan for next year’s summer camp. I do not know yet if I am going to attend, because I am hoping to go to Bingle Camp for the first time in the upcoming year. If I had the chance, though, I would definitely go back. The proximity of the ocean and the fun atmosphere made Fun In The Son 2008 plenty of fun!

Just warning everybody, I got my learners permit, so the roads aren’t safe for anybody! So far, I haven’t actually made it on any roads, but I did practice in an empty parking lot. I learned how to use the brake, how to steer, use turn signals, and turn on the windshield wipers (it was raining a little bit). Technically, I could have gotten my permit seven months ago, when I turned 15, but I took a Florida Virtual School course that exempted me from having to take one at the DMV. I couldn’t enroll in the course until I turned 15, and then with the rest of my school it took me a while to finish it. Since then I have had AP tests, vacation, and other school, so I kept putting it off. I finally found the time to do it during our “vacation” week of Vacation Bible School when we didn’t do any school. I got to practice that day, but I got sick after that, and then started my 2008-09 courses, so I haven’t gotten to drive since then, but maybe I’ll get to today. Just beware, cause now I’m driving!

-Ashley