Dani's Discovery Tours via Photos #1: First Oasis Church Camping

(Photo Credit: Ricky Martin)

I'm interrupting my regular program of blogging to post a series called "Dani's Discovery Tours". I will design these posts to take you on a quick trip through some of my recent experiences (ha - if you call within the last month, "recent") via photos.

This first post in the series provides a glimpse into the first annual Church Camping event for our new church, Oasis, which was held on a very warm weekend in July.

That's an impressive heap 'o eggs and shells! Food is always a major part of the church camping experience. In the past, Grace Church's camping menus didn't vary a whole lot from year to year after we got into a pattern. This year the food committee wanted to try a few different meal ideas, such as a diner style breakfast on Saturday morning and a chicken bbq for Sunday lunch. Usual or unique, all the food was scrumptious!

Games and group activities are another involving and interesting part of the camping weekend. Even though it was very hot outdoors, people really got into playing Rock, Paper, Scissors in teams. Another group activity was a newspaper headlines/pictures challenge. Sometimes smaller groups of people played board games in the air-conditioned Stonehouse.

And, of course, the water balloon toss is an annual tradition that we could not miss. This activity starts out quite structured with rules about when to toss the balloon to your partner and how to take a step back every time you throw it and such, but as things progress, the water balloon toss becomes a free-for-all full-out dash and blast accompanied by lots of noise and water.

I already referred to the Stonehouse part of the campground at Hidden Acres, to which we could retreat for air-conditioning when we needed to cool off. It was also a wonderful shelter to escape to when a rain-and-wind storm blew in rather suddenly on Saturday evening. We moved our campfire sing and share time indoors, too. During the informal devotional time, one of  men revived an abandoned tradition by teaching us the music and motions to the children's song, "With Jesus in my Boat, I Can Smile at the Storm". 

For me, the church service on Sunday morning is always a special and meaningful time during the camping weekend. The outdoor pavilion we were in this year had such good acoustics and we had some very lively congregational singing. I just loved it! On Camping Sunday our pastor typically has a practical message about the church; this time he spoke about the pilgrimage of Oasis thus far.

Since we are a young church, (I realize Oasis hasn't been going very long yet, but here I mean we have lots of littles) much of church camping involved children in one way or another. 

By Sunday afternoon, the little people showed us just how much energy they had put into the weekend when their exhaustion-induced meltdowns began cropping up. Even in that, the children gave us an object lesson of sorts. Like one of my friends said, when we adults have our "issues", often we need someone in our church family to acknowledge that we're tired, to encourage us to be the mature and responsible people we are - even if we don't feel that way at the moment, and to gently steer us toward Home.

"My Hat Hurts"

 

 

Have you ever noticed how the little people, the ones we think we bigger people can teach things to, are often the ones to teach us stuff?

I thought about this when I met a wonderful little boy named Brayden back in January when I went with Ken to some board meetings in Reading, PA. We stayed with Brayden's family (he has wonderful parents and siblings, too) for a few days, which I mentioned in this post.

Observing Brayden made me ponder my relationship with God, and how He might view me as His daughter who is growing up (trying to, anyway) as she does life.

I found myself asking God if, to Him, I'm like Brayden in these ways:

1. I say "My hat hurts", when really it's my head being scrunched into a tight hat that is uncomfortable. I express hurt from my perspective, while He knows all things...He knows where the hurt really stems from and He's taken great pains to heal that hurt. Nonetheless, He wants me to tell Him how I'm hurting, in my own words, from my perspective. And sometimes, without saying anything, He reaches down motherly hands and gently rearranges the hat.

2. I whine and complain and demand in a loud voice and then He says, "Danette, stop and look Me in the face. Say, 'Please may I have...?'"

3. Someone - a sibling, no less - corrects me scornfully, but I don't want to take it as truth. I keep saying blue blasketball because it's easiest and I don't want anyone telling me what to do or how to change. Especially when they know perfectly well what I mean. Even if an adult says, "If we, along the same lines, call you Blayden instead of Brayden, is that okay?", I say "Sure!" - I'm that set in my own ways and wisdom. (God, do You shake Your head over me sometimes?)

4. When I carefully line up my dinkies on the carpet in two rows side by side with a narrow aisle between and a younger brother who is not feeling very well comes up to my little cars with an excited giggle and triumphant grin and tries to toddle through, stepping one foot into that aisle, I get all fearful and uptight. "He's messin' up my cars!" I shriek. And He holds me and says, "No, he's not. I'm watching him. I'll pick him up if he wrecks your lines. Come, let's sit together and watch him try to walk through the path. Here, let's make the aisle between the cars a little wider for him..."

5. My favorite song is "How Great Thou Art". At first, I want to listen to my favorite recording of that song and sing along with it on Mommy's phone while we're riding in the van, but Daddy has it on his phone and he's not with us right now so Mommy says she can't play it. Then a stranger in the van suggests we sing it all together and I protest at first, but then concede. All ages and genders and acquaintances, family and strangers sing "How Great Thou Art" and it sounds beautiful and it's fun because we're all singing about Someone and to Someone bigger than ourselves. Of course, I don't understand all of this, but I understand some of this. It brings me peace and contentment. And great delight.

So that's what Brayden taught me last month.
What have you learned from the littles in your life lately?

This Post's Quote:

My teacher daughters sometimes come home from school with funny stories or sayings originating in their classrooms. Like this one, as overheard during chat time at lunch: A student related in somewhat dramatic detail a description of a mother cat on their farm that had the nasty habit of eating her own kittens. Another student piped up, "Would that be called 'cattibalism'?"

This Post's Childhood Memory:

I remember a toy coffee perk that my sister and I loved to play with in our make-believe kitchen. The picture of it in my mind is rather indistinct, but I think it had red and clear plastic parts. It was designed in such a way that when you tipped the perk as if to pour its contents and set the pot back down again, some dark liquid inside would bubble up to make you believe you were perking coffee. (not unlike the vanishing milk toy baby bottles from the '60s) When we weren't playing with the coffee perk, we usually kept it in the little wooden cupboard that our daddy built for us, but sometimes we forgot to put it away. It was bad news the times that the perk was sitting on the living room heater and we forgot to put it away - I remember the sinking feeling of coming into the living room and seeing the prized toy with its bottom half partially melted, rendered almost useless from being on the heat too long. (It seems like we went through a couple of coffee perks this way.) I still have a partial set of dishes we used to play with long ago - a few of the red plastic cups and some of the little tin saucers and plates - but sadly, no perking coffee pot!