Shine: weeks 2 and 3!

Hello friends! I'm a bit behind on posting...We've had 2 weeks of camp at King's Domain since my last post so now is the time to catch you up on what has been happening here!

2 weeks ago was another week of camp for the urban kids and I was placed in Cabin 6. This cabin in generally known for having the oldest girls at camp, and with the older girls usually comes a lot of attitude. Needless to say, I was slightly nervous going into the week because I wasn't sure how I was going to handle the stress of girls who just didn't want to be there. My friend Erin and I ended up with only 4 girls in our cabin, all 12 years old and the week thankfully turned out a lot better than I expected.

The biggest challenge of Week 2 was not feeling like I wasn't really connecting with my girls. With only 4 of them who were all friends, they weren't that interested in letting me hang out with them. That kind of changed on Thursday when they were having some friend issues and I was able to talk with them individually, learn a bit about their lives, and then share mine with them. It's cool how God uses bad situations for the good of those involved! The girls didn't really work out their issues right then, but I'm pretty sure I got them thinking about ways that God would want them to act towards each other rather than always reacting in a negative way. And 2 of them rededicated their lives to Christ that night, so that was encouraging!

This past week was "suburban week" and kids came from area churches with their friends for an extended week at camp (Sunday-Friday evening rather than Tuesday-Friday morning). I was in Cabin 1 (the little girls!) with my friend Jenn. We had 10 campers and they were all super cute and a lot of fun! But, this week was definitely the most challenging for me. Almost everything that we prepared for during training weeks happened during Week 3: one of the younger girls was very homesick (but still had lots of fun!) so I was up late most nights comforting her, and a few other things also happened. The week was also longer than the other ones, so I think tiredness played a huge role in challenging me. I didn't think the stress was really affecting me, but when you pray for patience God will definitely give you opportunities to demonstrate patience haha! Loving on these girls and being patient with them paid off though, and 2 of my girls accepted Christ! I got to see them ring the dinner bell so that we could rejoice with them and with all of the angels in Heaven :)

I have many funny and encouraging stories from Week 3 that I would LOVE to share with you, so definitely ask me about them sometime :) Despite it being a little more difficult, it may have been my favorite so far...it's hard to decide haha.

I want to hear about all of your summers, so keep in touch! I love you all!

- Kayla