OOPS

Pearls and Dreams

I thought I had posted that I'd be gone for a week. I guess I'd told Wanda and Wolfbaby and an email list. OOPs.

I went to church camp as a counselor, and a creating writing instructor. I went down a day early, as requested, for counselor training. I was asked to be the camp medic. That was, an interesting job to say the least.

The week started off with a little girl getting a nail under her fingernail. YIKES! Scared me to death! I was clueless what to do. Do I take her to the ER? Do I call her mom? Do I watch it? What do I do??? BREATH PEGGIKAYE!!

So, I made her wash it really well with antibacterial soap, and then put some neosporin on it, and then put a bandaid on it. I then went to find out if we could administer tylenol without written permission.
We could. *whew*

The girl had an identical twin sister. Her sister, got an infected finger on the SAME finger of the opposite hand on the next day. Weirdness. Heard of that phenomenon, never knew it was actually true.

We had one kid break his wrist at the skateboard park, the only one who had to go to the ER. Much better than last years 5 kids ... mine stayed out of the ER this year. No one from our church went to the ER this year.

We had some very serious issues that we dealt with in the camp, from kids caught smoking (in MY CABIN!!) to suicidal ideation, to eating disorers (plural) to kids who'd been molested, to kids and drug use (and yet again, in MY CABIN)to one girl who'd been a victim of attempted murder.

I made some good connections at the camp, both teens and adults. I had many of the adults tell me that it was a real privilege to watch me with my kids. They really enjoyed watching us together and wished they could see that kind of relationship more often.

I was very disappointed the last day that I didn't get to hear Samuel preach. The final chapel, they had a chance to share testimonies and Samuel jumped up there and told the kids that I had said that I came to camp to hear him preach ... but he said that I came for the kids. He asked the kids to raise their hands if they'd been touched by me this week. 205 kids in the camp and over half of them raised their hand. A good number of them were waving them in the air. It brought tears to my eyes, both to see the kids raise their hands and to realize that my son felt it was important to honor me that way!!

The experience was incredible. We had some students from Mid America Christian University (where the camp was located)... a Church of God university ... as well a team of students from Anderson University in Anderson Indiana. The kids from MACU ... I could not have been more impressed with. The kids from Anderson ... I could not have been less impressed with. In fact, I'll be writing a letter to Anderson University about them. Not only did the kids miss out on an opportunity because of their behavior, but THEY missed out on an opportunity as well.

It was an incredible week. The hardest time, by far, was the moment I got a phone call from a friend here in Tulsa. Her 17 year old baby has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. They found it thursday and admitted her immediately. Friday, they found out it is too centralized in the brain to operate on it here in Tulsa, so they are sending her to OKC so a pediatric neurosurgeon is going to do it, instead of a neurosurgeon who does pediatrics. They do suspect it's cancer.

I was devastated ..and fell apart. One of our girls, 16 years old happened to be walking through the lobby and saw me, as well as one of the twins ... they both prayed for me. The little girl was sooo precious. She wound up writing me a note, with a prayer for the baby, from herself, her twin, and her older sister and friend. I will treasure that forever, so will MY friend.

My son saw me crying in the lobby and came out to see what was wrong, he went in to get one of the other counselors, and one of the other youth pastor's who knew me (a former youth pastor from our church) also saw me and came out to find out what was wrong. They prayed with me as well. Leaving T and her baby in God's hands was sooo hard. I wanted to come running home to Tulsa to take care of them. Rob and Samuel and Melissa reminded me that I had 205 kids that still needed me at camp.

It was an incredible week. I've been set up to mentor through email a couple of girls over the next few months and I've gotten several emails from the kids already ... what a week. How my health and energy held up has got to be a God thing only.

I got home and found out that Thursday night, my mom was in the emergency room. She thought she'd taken her daily medications and instead taken the rest of her months supply of Ritalin ...10 pills!!! No one called me, her heart handled it ok ...so they decided to not bother me at camp. Given the shape I was in over my friends baby, that's probably a good thing. Had that not happened, I'd have been really upset.

I got back and found out that we have an address assigned to our new home .... and we're to make an appointment to choose our layout, and to pick our colors, and we should have a building date soon! :)

I have more news, but I can't think of it right now.

Sorry I failed to notify everyone I was going out of town ... it was nice to get the comments of concern and the emails asking if I was ok. Thank you so much!