What I think I know

Mountain biking is intrinsically good, materialism is intrinsically bad, therefore: mountain biking is true when it brings contentment, not discontentment.

Sunshine brings happiness; rain a spirit of melancholy.

Heat enables and cold paralyzes.

Mountains hide the sunset while plains leave you with nowhere to hide.

Friends have the power to influence you. If you want to be influenced positively, develop positive relationships.

Negative relationships will necessarily have a negative effect on you. This may come in the form of negative attitudes or the reinforcement of negative behaviour.

It may not always be possible to control your influences, therefore choose your friends carefully and your close friends even more carefully. If you feel certain people are negatively influencing you, concentrate on positively influencing them. Rather than moving down to their level so that you can be with them, set your bar high and show them what you expect of them.

Children depend on their parents to break down logic problems for them. They will often miss hidden premises or the personal implications of what is said. This is evident in the inability of a group of children to respond when told to form a straight line without each individual receiving specific instruction on how to do so.

When an 18 year old demonstrates an apparent inability to understand the implications of the statement “we need to leave by 9:00am tomorrow” it is a mark of his youth, demonstrative that he expects someone else to provide him with more specific instructions. This problem can be easily avoided so long as the instructor does not act like the teenager’s parents. 18 year olds are capable of taking responsibility for themselves but, like children, they will avoid it if they think they don’t have to.

You say goodbye, but I say

Hello. I am not in any way confident that I have anything to say right now. Today marked the end of Juniors 2, and my second week of counseling. My cabin left and I don't miss them. Perhaps I don't form attachments easily, perhaps I am not emotional. perhaps I am only not sentimental, but then again, I think I am all of those things.

Yesterday someone asked me if I love my kids, and I said "I don't know". She said "Will you miss them when they are gone?".

I am supposed to love these kids. The concept is "loving kids to Christ". Do I love them? I think so.

I told her I thought I loved them, and she asked them if I love them like Jesus does. I suppose she was trying to motivate me, she was a head counselor after all.

I don't love them like Jesus does, I love them because Jesus does. I value them because Jesus values them. It makes me sad when I see them hurting eachother because I know it makes God sad. My job is to love these kids, and I do, but I don't miss them. I am genuinely glad that my influence on their life has come to an end, or at least diminished. It is a lot of pressure to know that God is working through you.

Not that I should have to do the work, right? I mean, if God's working through me, what do I have to worry about, right? Yeah, uhuh, whatever.

Now I have to be right with God; now I have to be asking for his help so that I can recieve it, I have to be constantly making sure to ask God for help so that I'm relying on him and not my own adequacy, qualifications, or prerequisites. I have to be sure I'm depending on God otherwise I'm only giving myself, and I'm not enough.

When I think past on the last week, I wish I'd had more chances to rub off on (influence)the kids, but If I could do it again, I wouldn't be more outgoing, I'd be more prayerful.




I want to store up my treasures in heaven, and the last thing I want to do is brag to you, so I'm not going to tell you any stories from the past 2 weeks. I think what I have said so far is very much what I needed to say. Please pray with my during the rest of the summer. If you do not know, I will be counseling a total of three weeks this summer, and other 7 I will be the mountain bike leader. This means that I am not going to be sleeping in a cabin again for another 4 weeks, which will give me plenty of time to prepare myself for my third and final week of counseling this summer, which I'm sure will be altogether different.

Director Clearance Acquired

Snarls Darkly

Firstly I wish to state that the title of this blog post has absolutely nothing to do with it's content whatsoever.

So I'm a Junior Counselor or "Cabin Leader" if you don't like the misleading nomenclature of "Counselor". Chris is my Senior Counselor, he does everything and I do everything I can to help. The head counselor just came and told me that he watches everyone, and that he thinks I've been doing a good job. I spilled all my concerns to him, all the things I've had to deal with and am still dealing with. He says that next week he wants to make me a Senior Counselor, with my own Junior Counselor to be mentored by me and to help me. That would shift a lot of responsibility onto myself. Most notably, I would have to actually keep track of whether these kids are wearing sunscreen, drinking enough water, eating enough, taking their medication, etc. - things Chris takes car of. I would feel even more responsible when these kids show absolutely no interest in talking about God, and when it seems impossible to have a serious descussion at all. Hopefully by the end of this week I will have dealt with that, and figured out just what exactly the signs of spiritual growth in a 9 year old are.

There's this one kid who just lays in his bed at night shouting the most ridiculous things- "Potty humour" as my mom would say, and there's no way to control him. It seems to get worse and worse, yesterday I stood right next to him and prayed softly while he shouted, but I eventually just left him alone. There is no way to make this kid sleep when you want him to, there is no way to control him. I'm past the point of being angry at him and now I'm just trying to do my best to love him, and it's getting easier.

They say that at camp the quiet, the darkness, the long nights can force a kid to be alone with his thoughts, and that God can speak to them then. Sometimes I wish we could tie this kid to a tree and come back for him in the morning. I just want something good to take place inside of him, but it's the quiet times that he becomes the most unreasonable. Please pray that God would work in him through us.

IWTM4SB

Today I got my bikers to climb a mountain. A girl came along, she must have been 12. My Brazilian assistant had to push both her and his bikes up the entire mountain. She walked as slow as any person you've ever seen. We made it somehow though. Girls sign up for Mountain biking even though they've never mountain biked before, because the regular camp group is totally full. It makes it hard, I often wish they would quit biking and do something else, but we have to go at their pace, so it made it a little hard on my assistant, but he's a tank, so it worked. The guys complained the whole way, but I'm just so happy we made it. A few days ago they complained whenever we had to ride up a hill, but now they have that actual mountain biking experience, that actual adventure and sense of accomplishment. When I was in biking at Q in 2003ish, we did way more adventure stuff, and I thought these kids were just lame because they complained so much, but I think from now on I'm going to do more with them, that way they'll get over their complaining faster, and the girls might decide not to come on the big ride (it's ok, I swear, they'll have more fun playing volleyball or something, I'm not being mean)

Tonight is the weekly concert of secular songs, in addition to the regular Christian stuff. There's a lot of pressure put on it from the campers, it could be really lame because it's our first time playing through the set.