Glory Story: The Lost Are Found.

For one week during the summer, T Bar M hosts a camp called Ultimate Swim Camp which is put on by Olympian Josh Davis. It is basically an elite swim camp for swimmers ages 9-16. This camp goes on at the same time as Sports Camp so they pull only a few coaches over from Sports Camp to be counselors for USC. I was one of the lucky ones chosen to work USC.

It seriously is considered a big deal if you get chosen because it is seen as such a great break from the daily grind of Sports Camp. We had a really great group and we had a lot of fun.

Because I was the oldest coach chosen for USC, they gave me the oldest girls. All my little chickies were 15 and 16 and they were wonderful! I loved them! Almost all of them had been coming to the camp since they were little and they were all good friends. All except one.

One girl (who was actually form Waco) came for the first time ever and was a little awkward. She didn't really get along with the other girls in our group and was pretty defiant when I asked things of her. She was always in front of the mirror and seemed to do anything she could to get out of doing the swimming drills. I was frustrated to say the least. 1) You are at a SWIMMING camp and you don't want to swim... what??? 2) You are 15 and should not still have these type of obedience issues. 3) WHY DON'T YOU LIKE ME?! It seriously drove me up a wall.

Another thing I kept noticing was that during our devo time in the mornings she would never answer the questions. I would have to literally tell her that she needed to write an answer on the paper or she would just sit there. I had just about had it. So needless to say, when Gospel presentation rolled around I didn't expect much.

I had pretty much assumed that all of my girls were saved. I had a few rock solid ones that I figured would want to have some deeper talks during stargaze, but I still didn't expect much. That was when I saw my trouble child sitting on a swing far off from the group.

I went and sat by her and asked her if she wanted to talk about anything. She looked at me and said, "I have never heard the whole story of Jesus before. I don't know that much about him." After being a little taken by surprise and having a thousand bells and whistles go off in my head I told her the entire story with every detail I could remember. I think the details are important to help demonstrate the extravagance of God's love and the cross. It's usually the details that hook peoples hearts. And it did just that in her! She gave her life to Jesus!

The next day I asked her if she wanted to do the Bible Study just the two of us.When we sat down I told her what to turn to and to start reading. When I got back I asked her what it was about and she acted like she had no clue. She told me that she didn't understand it. Well, I picked up her Bible and come to find out her Bible was the King James Version and she literally had NO CLUE what it was talking about. I got straight up from the table and ran to the camp store to buy her a Bible. When I gave it to her and we opened to the passage we were reading in James she immediately started eating it up! I mean, the highlighter and pen were flying all over that thing!

This story might not seem like much. It was just AMAZING how much the Gospel transformed her attitude by the end of the week. She was joyful and sweet! She loved on me consistently after that. It made me think of something Carl said in Dwelling Place one time (or a thousand times) "Lost people do lost things." Once she had Jesus, everything flipped! The Gospel is POWERFUL. Now I get random texts from her telling me how she told her parents that she loves Jesus now and that her pastor has been helping her with reading and understanding her Bible and that she is getting baptized in a couple weeks! Watch out, she's gonna be a world changer.

Glory Story: Freedom in Christ

So, I did a horrible job at keeping the blog updated during my time at camp because I had such little down time! However, God did SO much and of course I want people to know the ways I saw God move. Until I believe I have exhausted my stories, we are going into a time here on the Sweetest Field called Glory Stories. They are basically gonna be quick posts with just short little stories of how God revealed himself to me this summer!

Our first story is about FREEDOM. Holy Jesus, his freedom is so sweet and such a perfect present from the father.

So, during the fifth session of camp I had a camper named Sadie. She was a character. On opening day we get profiles on each camper and in there they have any comments their parents sent us about their child. They are called Red Flags which obviously doesn't make it sound like a good thing. So, Sadie's red flag said she had severe ADHD, but took medicine so it should be fine. My co-coaches were a little overwhelmed and put off at the thought of having an ADHD girl in their small group so I volunteered to have her.

She was indeed a handful. She was extremely outspoken, outgoing, and clingy--but at the same time she was hungry for more of God and pretty wise.

During our Wednesday night Gospel presentation I sat down to talk with Sadie about what she had seen and heard that night and if God was doing anything in her heart. She told me she had never asked Jesus into her heart before. We talked about it some more and once we felt she really understood and believed the Gospel she prayed the prayer. After that she looked at me and asked about all the sin she was going to do for the rest of her life. I got to tell her that all she had to do was pray to God and ask him to come and make her heart clean and forgive her and that he would do it right then and that she could pray that any time she wanted. At that, her eyes lit up. With urgency, she looked at me and said, "Can I do it right now?!" I said yes and explained to her how to pray. She just looked up at me with a huge smile and said, "I feel so FREE! I just feel like I could run around for hours!"

When we got up to go to the cabin she was still pretty blessed out. I looked at her and said, "Sadie, you can run to the cabin if you want." As she ran, I cried watching. It was one of the single most free moments I had ever seen and it wasn't even having to do with my own freedom. That was one of the moments that makes camp worth it.