Bye Bye Campers!

Well, we sent off the lats of the campers today. This week was certainly our most challenging by far, but I think it was well worth it.
We had two long-time SSP churches come this week, along with a Presbyterian church whose original mission trip plan got canceled. They were going to to to Tijuana, but they decided about a month ago not to go due to the uprising in crime and drug wars. This is where the issue lay: they were expecting something completely different.
In Mexico (a phrase we often heard from both campers and counselors alike), they built an entire house from roof to foundation in one week. When the came here and were plunked down in a different desert with only a can of paint and some brushes, these glorious expectations of home building were not met. It was a funny group, they marked on their evaluations that the night-time programs were too forced, but they were not spiritual enough. We talked about scripture both in a larger group setting and smaller, sang from the songbook (which is a little outdated and could use some revision) but they were dissatisfied. We had constant battles with them trying to explain that there are more ways to worship God than just through throwing scripture at them and singing contemporary worship. To add onto this, their youth leader and his wife were moving to Tacoma and decided that this was their last shebang. The new youth leader was stressed on multiple levels; trying to connect with his students, trying to adapt to the SSP antics, and struggling with what we as a staff saw as a too idealistic view of ministry. Because of all these things, we felt constant criticisms from both the leaders and the campers. This made it to be one of the hardest ministry things I've ever done.
The criticism and disrespect we saw from both the campers and the youth leaders of the group was too much for us all. We lost hours of sleep trying to figure out how to adapt to fit their needs, trying to accommodate them as much as we could without forgetting the other two churches. Most nights we were lucky to get into bed before 12.30, and twice it was past 1. That is especially rough when you have to get up at 5.30 and have time only for a one hour nap.
So after many highly emotionally discussions, tears, and sinful grudges being held against almost any and all who attended this particular church, we had had enough. Phil was our advocate, and pulled the three youth leaders aside before breakfast and talked to them. Things ended up going really well, they in no way meant to disrespect us, it was just the way that they dealt with things at their church. If there was a problem in their youth group, they quit what they were doing and talked about it. Since the SSP staff did not do this, many of the campers felt that they were unheard when they told us that they wanted more scripture study. But we had to take it with a grain of salt, trying to help them understand that there were two other churches there already who were doing great, and to make any major changes in the program would be very disruptive to them. Both sides apologized for the mistrust and unloving manners in which we had treated each other.
The campers were still hard on us. A few of them were starting to understand where we were coming from and giving us a little grace, but for the most part they just complained about anything they could. SSP had an outbreak of the norro virus a few years back (its the one that cruise ships get where it spreads like wildfire and everyone gets barfy and diarrhea), and because of this we have a very strict sanitary policy when serving food. Nobody but staff is allowed to touch serving utensils, katsup bottles, salad dressing, etc., and before meals they must all wash their hands and then squirt them with hand sanitizer. On so many of the evaluations we had today, they complained that they are fully capable of pouring their own dressings, etc. Tehy must have forgotten the reason behind these good intentions, we had told them on the first day why we are suck sticklers about it.
Even though this week was tough and I cried a lot, it was completely worth it. As much as they tried not to, we are convinced that they all had a good time. The other two churches had a great time. And to top it all off, four people from different churches either rededicated their lives to Jesus or gave it to Him for the first time. Praise the Lord!
So we have two more days in the desert of McDermitt, NV, then off to debrief in Sacramento. Hope to see you all soon!