The end - not!

Monday –

Saturday the goodbyes began. Campers don’t want to leave, they just don’t. Some are returning to fine situations, some are returning to some rough situations – neither population wants to go home. Diane has been on Facebook with a few of our campers already and it sounds like they’re making plans to come and visit within the next few days! (for EC veterans S.O. and J.B. may be spending some time with us). And then it’s Sunday and goodby to the staff – if you personally know a staff member pray for them now – it’s a hard transition back to the real world.

We’ve been perusing the camper evaluations of camp – the reviews are in! We did very well in the campers eyes. Teachers, cooks, counselors, Activities leaders and even the Bible teacher got some really positive feedback. From the staff’s point of view, I think we saw some real spiritual progress with the campers (which many also self-reported - 9@”first step with Jesus”; 8@”fresh start with Jesus”; 18@”took a new step with Jesus” and if you do that math you’ll figure out that some kids indicated more than one choice but I’m so pleased so many were stirred spiritually).

It’s been the usual end of camp whirlwind over the past few days – you’d think once the campers left it would ease up but there’s tons to do to wrap up camp. If you plan that the tasks will take X time, you need to then multiply by a factor of 3 to get the accurate estimate.

Our clean-up went fairly well and the day was perfect for the visit to Freiburg. The train trip itself is only about 5 minutes long but that was plenty of time for about half of our folks to nod off. Early Sunday I made the first of two runs into the Basel Train station to drop folks off for the direct trip to Zurich airport. Apparently I’ve set a new record for getting two different folks to the trains with 30 seconds to spare – nothing like a shot of panic and adrenaline to end a camp.

We arrived back at our home in Kandern about 6PM last night – absolutely spent – we slept well last night – and today new staff conference began – time to change hats.

May God continue to grow and bless the fruit of English Camp Maugenhard ’08 for years to come – to His honor and glory – AMEN!