My Missions Blog, Part II

The next day was down to the nitty gritty of the trip. There is a bell that rings when it is meal time, gathering time or some emergency. It means come to where the bell is. It rings every morning in the 7:30 – 8:15 range. There is no real schedule in these parts and the camp leaders are rather proud of that fact. They are an interesting family. The wife’s father built the lodge. The husband is a tall, gangly man with terrible teeth, bowl cut hair and a face only the best of Christian’s could love. He is a good man though with a great heart for the kids who come to camp each year. His wife has this generic northerner look. Nordic features with dark hair. She plays the guitar and leads worship for the camp. They both cook because it is a never ending job with 44 people to feed three times a day. They have two children who are both home-schooled and have the social skills to prove it. Sweet kids. The girl is very shy and smiles eagerly through her long red hair & freckles. The son is… well… all boy. They all have great immune systems because in this neck of the woods, cleanliness is NOT next to godliness. Their home and the entire lodge is maintained rather minimally. I am growing fond of this place and these people despite it’s peculiarities.

Today is chinking day. It is repairing the girl’s cabin day. And sharing the gospel day. Our group is split into two groups. One will do manual labor & the other will go door to door hanging literature on door knobs. My hand cannot fly up fast enough to do manual labor. I really do not like it when Jehovah’s Witnesses & Mormons come to my home. It feels like an invasion of my privacy. I do not want to be that person. I believe sharing your faith should be a natural extension of the life you live. Either your life shares it or it doesn’t. Mine is rather iffy on that account. Actions always speak louder than words and words tend to be empty all too often. There are definitely times when words of encouragement & guidance can lead someone closer to or into their personal relationship with Jesus, but if our lives don’t match what we say then it is hard for other’s to trust. In this skeptical culture we have developed in America a pamphlet on my door knob might as well be a Walmart sale advertisement. I feel it carries very little weight but I do occasionally take advantage of their roll back prices so I won’t knock it too hard. Just not my cup of tea.

So I spend my day chinking logs. I learned that Oaken is this kind of rope that looks like it is made out of horse hair that gets stuffed between the logs in a log cabin. It acts as insulation. My job was to take the flat end of a crow bar & stuff it back in. All around the lodge. We did not have any new Oaken so we had to just stuff the existing Oaken back in that had fallen out. I found a rat’s nest that had been made of the stuff above the cabinet in the dining area. I recycled most of it but the little rodent had also shred a stuffed ball into the mix so I had to try to shake that part out. The things you do for missions. I also helped prepare meals the whole day in between chinking. The campers arrived at 11am and chaos ensued. I just kept chinking and ignored them mostly. I am not a really good kid person. I love mine, but…

It was a tedious day. And then my employment back in Georgia started invading my space for a while. The poor camp directors had to let me into their house to use their internet connection, not once but twice, so I could send a few documents over for work. They did not have a scanner or a fax machine so I had to get one of them to drive me to the nearest town to fax a document that had to have my signature on it. By the time I got done with that it was time to help prepare dinner. My 73 year old room mate & I made chocolate chip muffins and had the funniest time doing it. They were the hit of dinner, of course, and we beamed proudly at each other as we ate dinner side by side. I sat there admiring my chinking and feeling pretty accomplished.

Eating with the little campers all around is noisy & hectic but they all seem very happy to be at camp & are generally cooperative. We went out to a camp fire later and froze our toes off while singing choruses & listening to a Bible story. Three little boys accepted Christ that night and the bell rang 3 times. I took a long hot shower afterwards and fell asleep with my hair still wet, out of sheer exhaustion.

I must admit I felt almost drugged the next morning when I woke up. All the travel, work & general hoopla had me dragging. I woke up with medusa hair from sleeping on it wet & decided it was definitely a hat day. I got into the kitchen early enough to help slice some nectarines & pull grapes off the stem for breakfast. After a meal of French toast, bacon, fruit and hot chocolate we met as a team in this little trailer along the path to the RV graveyard. Everything here is orange, green & brown plaid. Most of the furniture is from the 70’s and has the original fabrics still on them. We decided at the trailer meeting that some of us would go out on the streets again and some would paint the ceiling in the basement of the church in town that was associated with the camp. Wow. Painting a ceiling. It was tough work but you know I volunteered for it. My hands would go numb and my head was throbbing while I looked up to paint some sort of cork board that seemed to drink in the paint like a sponge. We ate salami & turkey sandwiches for lunch and painted some more. I finally decided my pounding head was from caffeine withdrawal. I had not had a Mountain Dew in probably 36 hours and not even 4 Ibuprofen dulled the pain. I took a break and swang on the tree swing with the kids for a while and then started back painting. Soon we were ready to head back to camp but not before the kids were stained red & purple from eating Mulberries straight from the trees and Raspberries from the field. I guess we abandoned the counting off system because we were off to Walmart when we pondered if we had left anyone behind. We decided we hadn’t. I bought $150 worth of warmer clothes at Mr. Walton’s boutique and we headed back to camp. Morgan decided to abandon me for the night and sleep in the tree house with the camp girls. Staying with a 73 year old and your Mom can’t really compete, huh? I guess it could more accurately be described as a Tree Bus since it is an old camp bus they put up in the tree. My roommate & I were silly, I suppose, for wanting to actually sleep at 11pm. About midnight we realized our room was the closest route for 8 campers to get to the tree house as they trounced through our bedroom giggling and talking loudly. This was also the night that my little critter friends came to visit. I guess Morgan had gotten something out of the zipped bag & forgot to re-zip it. About 4am I heard the little whatever-it-was rustling the plastic & snapped up out of bed clapping my hands. I got up and secured everything & could not go back to sleep. Of course. I tried to find a place where I could type without disturbing someone but every corner seemed to have someone on a pallet or air mattress. Even the main lodge. So I laid in bed trying to play brick breakers on my blackberry but even that had some kind of glitch in it. Grrr. So I harrumphed and just laid in bed staring at the ceiling for an hour or so until sleep finally came.

Everyone’s personality is definitely coming out by this point in the journey. Our parolee is a funny guy. Very child like but with the strong opinions of an adult. He is starting to annoy some of the adults. He speaks with strong Ebonics and the young preacher’s wife is determined to get him to say S-TR-EETS but every time it comes out Skreets. I told her she needed to give up & expand her linguistics skills. He really has a good heart and is pretty amazing over all considering what he has been through in his 33 years. I am getting a little annoyed with the adults for being annoyed with him. He has been a Christian for 1 year. What is their excuse?

I have found the leader with the poofy mustache to be a roller coaster ride of mood swings. He is never completely unpleasant but he gets irritated and snippy sometimes and then can be almost annoyingly chipper and bouncy other times. For some reason he walks around every parking lot we pull into & picks up trash & returns buggies to the holding corral. He is a flurry of motion at all times. Oh gosh, and the crocs. He has red crocs. Camo crocs. Blue crocs. He is a lover of crocs. He really doesn’t like it if anyone second guesses his instructions and he is very knowledgeable about what to do when. I was especially frustrated with him when he lost his patience with the parolee once over something that was so petty it shouldn’t have been an issue… in my mind. But we are all getting tired now & I know these things are going to happen.

The almost 14 year old boy who came by himself is quiet and then alternately hyper and a very sweet guy. Super polite. As far as almost-15-year-old boys go, though, he is way above the curve. That one has a bright future!

The 17 year old girl has a neat story. She lived with her Mom until she was 10 but never sees her now. From 10 years old she has lived with her Dad & step mom whom she calls her Mom. She went to church alone for years and has been praying for her family to come too. Her Dad just got saved last year and now her whole family goes to church together. She asked lots of questions about life & church while we painted the ceiling together. Hope I didn’t ruin her with my answers. She is one of my favorites. Her and the 4 ½ year old boy. He is a HAND FULL but he is one of those with personality plus. He just cracks me up the whole trip with his antics, making his parents crazy and getting into all kinds of trouble. Sometimes I think to myself that the things they are expecting of him lead him into getting in trouble because no 4 year old can have that much endurance, discipline & pay attention for the lengths of time required. His family are work, work, workers. They volunteer quickly to go door to door. They have much more patience than I do and I am beginning to admire them as well. I would probably not hang out with them much without them becoming disapproving of aspects of my life but I like them. I think I am an OK Christian but not a very good Baptist and these guys, all of these guys on the trip, are thoroughbreds in that area. But this little couple is very laid back & sincere. They do exhaust me from afar because I remember how much work little kids are. Their 9 year old daughter is a saucy little thing who gets along well with most of the kids & is easily corrected when she goes astray. She spends a lot of time with Morgan, playing her Nintendo DS Fashion game. Divas!

Another favorite of mine is my 73 year old room mate. Talk about spunky. She was married to the music director at her church for 48 years. He died about 1 ½ years ago, so she is really figuring out what to do with her life now. I found out she lives in my neighborhood. So much for mowing the grass with a Corona in hand, anymore. She has been away from home for almost 3 weeks now. She has a wry sense of humor like mine & finds the leader a bit too perky at times as well. She is a servant at heart & works easily in the kitchen with the rest of us ladies, although she is occasionally a little too helpful and kinda gets on the leader’s wife’s nerves. It has all gone very smoothly though. Her 14 year old grandson has been on the three week trek with her. They will be riding home with us, so now our head count will go up to 14 instead of 12. I am and will always be SIX, however.

My son Noah is such an easy going laid back kid. He has fit in easily with the guys in his cabin. Sometimes he hangs with the 14 year old who came with his grandmother, my room mate, and sometimes he plays with the campers. Morgan & Noah both are generally quiet & compliant. I am so proud of both of them. Neither of them were the hardest workers but they are genuinely sweet, loving kids. More to come...