SkiFest and Tweakage

Those aren't just badly spelled and made up words.  They are the two things that took up my whirlwind weekend home.  I'm interning in a church just west of Sacramento, CA, but I work the summers at a camp my church owns in Golden, CO.  So when the camp director asked if I'd help out at a ski camp involving several youth groups in the Front Range area, I told him if he could get me out of a week of interning, I was there.  He did it.

I flew home on Saturday, Feb. 15.  I worked SkiFest 2008 on Sunday and Monday.  Then left Monday for a camp gathering in Ringgold, LA known as Tweakage.  We got to the camp at 2:30 Tuesday morning, attended several sessions that day and left Wednesday morning.  That was the night I was supposed to be back in Sacramento.  We missed our flight.  So I got back on Thursday after noon around 1 PM, having had just under 20 hours of sleep in 4 nights.

But the frenzy of the trip wasn't a problem.  It was fantastic.  The whole weekend was like drinking out of a firehose.  Just too much to take in, too much to even digest.  But I'll try to distill some of the things God taught me.

1) God's work is done by a lot of people.  Pulling off SkiFest was a first for our camp.  It was like a whole week of activity rolled into one evening.  I ran games, the director, Jason made announcements and an evangelist, Ken Sparks, spoke.  Those were the people the teens saw.  But there were way more people who made he whole thing tick.  Aaron the sound guy, Bethany the registration lady, Hannah and Byron the medical people, Brandi the kitchen lady, Carter the maintenance guy, Harry the dishwasher and a host of other volunteers who cleaned, shoveled, washed, cooked, diced, pushed and swept so that around 200 teens could hear the gospel.  Thank God for a body.  It's too much for one.

2) I can learn from others.  That's what Tweakage is all about.  "What does your camp do?  How do you handle this?  What was your best game last summer?" The name comes from stealing someone's ideas and "tweaking" them for you camp's philosophy and context.  Even people who I don't fully agree with can have valuable input.  I need to learn from them.

3) You're only sanctified as you are rested.  One of my teachers in college used to say that phrase all the time.  And the more I work, the more I see the truth of it.  It's easy to be upset at people's driving skills, obnoxious behavior, disagreements, and annoying habits when you get only a little sleep.  Which doesn't seem fair, since I've lost the sleep in the service of God.  I ought to be blest because of that, not cursed.  But it's the truth.  The tireder I am, the more I need to be on guard.

4) Drunk people need love too.  Seems random, huh?  As we boarded our flight from Dallas to Denver, a group of people were taking pictures before boarding.  You could here them probably in the next terminal.  They were drunk and had been for a while.  And surprise, they were sitting behind me and my friend, Byron.  So much for catching up on sleep on the flight home.  And as they laughed and joked and swore loudly behind me, I was convicted.  I was seeing the dramatic demonstration of those people's need of Christ.  Alcohol allows what's inside to come out.  And those people's wicked hearts were on display.  No annoyance of mine could change them; no smart comment by Byron could change them; only the blood of Christ could.  And I was angry at them for disturbing my sleep.  How's that for wrong priorities?

It was a good weekend.  I worked a lot, talked a lot, and didn't sleep a lot.  But I learned a lot.  By God's grace, what I learned will become what I am.  And we'll see about that.