I bet you go to church camp for God

Actually, yes I do. Church camp is one of the few places that I can actually be myself. In the craziness of competition or praying at the alters, I always enjoy myself so much that I'm almost depressed when it's time to go home on Friday. Every year this is a most looked forward to event in the whole youth group. We spend 360 days planning pranks we'll pull on our friends, reminescing about last year, and trying to keep in touch with the people we met and became friends with. It is, without a doubt, one of the greatest places on Earth.

Beginning on Monday, this camp takes complete strangers and puts them on teams competing for first place: a blue ribbon!Even though the reward seems small, it's surprising how much everyone bands together to try to win. With crazy team competition and sports games, it's not surprising that when you come home, you many have a few tshirts ruined with mud or baby food. The people there are the nicest you could ever hope to meet in your life. Sure, no one is perfect and sometimes there is a little bit of drama when we get caught up in the moment, but overall, everyone tries to be nice and let Jesus live through them. I have so many close friends from this camp that I've known for almost ten years (wow, I didn't realize I was that old). We keep in touch even though we're from different cities and I love them almost as much as my own family.

But what's better than the games, competition, and friends, is the fact that every night God is there in a most powerful way. Counselors have been praying all day that at night, when all else fades away, the one true thing will remain: that everyone is here to have an encounter with the Lord of all the earth. No matter what's going wrong in your life, He's there to wrap His arms around you and make you feel whole again. He doesn't care how many mistakes you've made or anything. As long as you're willing to give your life to Him and repent of your sins, He will take all of your problems and bad things and give you peace in return. That has to be one of the greatest feelings in the world: knowing that even though you're broken and bruised, someone still loves you and wants to help.