My New Not-So-Childish Ambition

As I was watching college football with my roommates last weekend, I have been inspired to become something new. USC was playing, and it was the beginning of the game, Tommy Trojan was riding around the stadium on his white stallion with his plume and cape streaming behind him. Fans were cheering, people were happy. Then the best part comes: Tommy the Trojan unsheathed his sword and stabs it into the ground in a tidal wave of symbolism.

That was the moment my fate was decided: If I were to be a part of a college and/or professional sport, i would want nothing more than to be the mascot. I'm pretty sure though being any mascot would be fun, I thing being SC's would be the best. Why, you ask? Duh. The sword!

So sorry to all you Bruins fans, the bear just doesn't do it for me. But since my dreams of being Tommy Trojan probably will not happen since I am not a male, maybe I'll show up for the Bruins Mascot Tryouts next year. I'll keep you posted.

Taking Courage

I'm currently going through the book of 2nd Chronicles during my devotion time each morning. I think sometimes we as believers can get caught up in the New Testament (not like its a bad thing) and forget how the LORD has paved the way and provided for His people before Christ's coming. So in light of that, I've been trying to journey through the OT as much as I can.
I came across an interesting verse the other day and haven't really stopped thinking about the concept. It is when the King of Judah, Asa, hears the words of a prophet telling the king that the LORD is with him. It says, "When Asa heard these words, the prophecy of Azariah the son of Oded, he took courage, and put away the abominable idols from all the land of Judah and Benjamin..." (2 Chronicles 15:8). Asa took courage. How interesting this statement is to me! Taking courage, as if it sits on a shelf or on the floor of my closet, easy to put on as a pair of socks.
What if it is really that easy? If we know that the LORD is all good, all loving, all-gracious and all-giving, why would taking courage be any harder than taking a breath? If we trust that the lot is cast into the lap, but the decision is wholly from the LORD, we have no reason to fear anything in our paths. We can take courage, for we know intimately the love and care of the LORD.

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage, be not frightened, neither be dismayed; for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go."
Joshua 1:9

The Soundtrack of My Life

I was walking from work on campus today to the place I have lunch almost every day (Charlie Brown's Cafe, CBC for the locals), and there was what is called a Nooner. Every Tuesday in one of the main quads there is a band or a musician who sets up shop and plays his or her music for an hour. As I was half listening to the solo and unplugged girl up there, it got me thinking about something absolutely dire: If my life had a soundtrack, what would be on it? So I put together one as soon as I got home today. I made a rule for myself that it had to be on my iTunes (but there is one exception) and there could only be one song from a band or artist. Here is what came up in no specific order:

Pocket Full of Sunshine-Natasha Benningfield (the exception)

Stillness-Aaron Shust

Blue Suede Shoes-Elvis Presley

Little Bitty Pretty One-Hootie and the Blowfish

I Want to Hold Your Hand-The Beatles

Ring of Fire-Johnny Cash

Please, Before I Go-Derek Webb

My Own Two Hands-Jack Johnson and Ben Harper

Down in the River to Pray-Allison Krauss

Far Away-Ingrid Michaelson

Compliante de la Butte-Rufus Wainwright

Hey-Jordan Yee

Where the Green Grass Grows-Tim McGraw

Suddenly I See-KT Tunstall

Girl From the North Country-Bob Dylan

Blue Eyes-Elton John

Table for Two-Caedmon's Call

No One's Gonna Love You-Band of Horses

Better Days-Goo Goo Dolls

The Blood-Shane and Shane

Beautiful Scandalous Night-Sixpence None the Richer

Weatherman-Damien Rice

Dancin' in the Moonlight-Toploader

Sing Hallelujah-Joe and Eddie

The Last Time He Saw Dorrie-Copeland

For The Widows In Paradise, For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti-Sufjan Stevens

Gravity-Shawn McDonald

Swallowed in the Sea-Coldplay

Summertime-Mae

Elephant Love Medley-Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman

When in Rome-Nickel Creek

Resurrection-Paul Wright

Chasing Cars-Snow Patrol

Look After You-The Fray

Sinkin' Soon-Norah Jones

Collide-Jars of Clay

Hear You Me-Jimmy Eat World

Beautiful Day-U2

Slow Motion-David Gray

I Shall Not Walk Alone-Ben Harper

Into the Sun-Lifehouse

Prayers of the Saints-Dave Barnes

Martyrs and Thieves-Jennifer Knapp

Bohemian Rhapsody-Queen

Break Bread-Josh Garrels

My Love Hasn't Grown Cold-Bethany Dillon

Its All Coming Back to Me Now-Celine Dion

I Will Wait-The David Crowder Band

So as this is the official (but not necessarily permanent) soundtrack to my life, feel free to check any of these people out on iTunes. They are all fabulous. Go forward with music.

Home

I'm taking this great class with a focus on Jewish Literature, even more focused on the ideas of home and exile. Our professor had us do a free write today for about twenty minutes on the idea of home-where we feel at home, what it is like, etc. Then we were to write about a place that we have visited that had an impact or was special in our lives. Here is what I wrote:

The meaning of home is solid and yet fluid, can mean the place I grew up or the place I sleep at night. Generally it means a place where the people I love reside, where I can also love.
My dad always says that home is where the toothbrush is. In that case, I've got at least two, maybe up all the way to four. One in Rohnert Park, two in OrangeVale, and maybe one in Santa Clarita.
If this truly is the case, I've had many homes, the most recent being in McDermitt, Nevada. Six weeks in the desert on an Indian Reservation, the classroom where my coworkers and I slept certainly was home. We slept there, we escaped the noisy campers, we got some quiet and sanity there. It was not home forever, but certainly a good season.
I won't have a permanent home here on Earth. I was not meant to stay here, and I don't want to either. When I have the knowledge of a place where the streets are made of gold and a King reigns forevermore, why would I ever desire to stay on earth? No, my home is in heaven with Jesus. I've seen Jesus my Lord, and desire nothing more but to be with Him.

I've Become a Humanitarian

I'm reading this wonderful book that somehow I acquired called Revolution in World Missions. It is written by a man with the name of K.P. Yohannan, a native of India. He is the founder and international director for Gospel for Asia. His words are so convicting! Picture this:

Its Friday morning and I'm sitting at the front desk of the Administration and Finance office at Sonoma State University. I'm the new Student Assistant, which really means that I just sit around and direct people to go somewhere if they come in. Needless to say, there is a lot of down time and I'm allowed to read if there is nothing for me to do.

I pick up the words of K.P. Yohannan, and find my eyes soon being stung by tears. He writes,

"Substituting a bowl of rice for the Holy Spirit and the Word of God will never save a soul and will rarely change the attitude of a man's heart. We will not even begin to make a dent in the kingdom of darkness until we life up Christ with all the authority, power, and revelation that is given to us in the bible...Thailand owes to missionaries its widespread literacy, first printing press, first university, first hospital, first doctor and almost every other benefit of education and science. In every area, including trade and diplomacy, Christian missionaries put the needs of the host nation first and helped usher in the 20th Century. Meanwhile, millions have slipped into eternity without the Lord. They have died more educated, better governed and healthier-but they died without Christ and they are bound for hell."

Ouch. I realized that my heart for doing good works and compassion projects was for the betterment of humanity, not for the spreading of the gospel. If a woman dies with her belly full of rice and yet without the Lord, what good have I really done? I have forgotten to include Jesus and the saving grace in my daily life. I have overlooked the eternal needs of the men and women around me only to be blinded by the overwhelmingly large task of their physical needs. A man on his deathbed will still listen to the news of Jesus if he is hungry. Perhaps it is not physical food that he hungers for, rather food of the Spirit. A dying man can be brought into new life.

Now I do not believe that meeting people's physical needs is a bad thing. It is a great thing to be educated and with a full belly and clothes on your back. Its also good to help people gain these things for themselves as well. But when I have the saving knowledge of Christ crucified and raised again and yet do not give it, then what good have I really done?

Blah, Blah, Blah, LOVE.

While we were in McDermitt, Mallory told us a story she had heard about a young girl whose family was talking to their pastor after church one Sunday. Upon being asked if she had enjoyed the sermon, they little girl replied that she had. When asked why, she said, "Well, it was just like the one last week: blah, blah, blah, love."
The insight of this girl intrigued me. I once was listening to a sermon from a man named Gil Stigleitz. In this sermon he told the congregation that if they walk away from a sermon and fail to love better, then it was as if they had slept through church.
Something that I've been asking the Lord to show me for a long time is to do this: to follow His commandment to love Him and His people. But it wasn't until recently that I realized that if I keep praying this, I will continually be challenged by those whom he places in my life specifically to answer this prayer.
If I ask for lessons on love, then will not the Lord place those who he knows are hard to love in my life? He will continually be humbling me and showing me the ceaseless love that He has and encouraging me to do the same; free of judgement, resentment, and selfishness. I've found that it is impossible to love without humility and a deep understanding of grace.

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!

The Following Things May Be Hazardous to Your Health

These are the top seven most dangerous things we came across this week:

The Refrigerator
Yes, the fridge. Here's the story: It was Monday afternoon; Kelley, Phil and I were prepping for our stir fry dinner. I was in the back room of the kitchen that is our pantry, dish washing place, and has a fridge and a freezer. Our fridge is a bit old-school, one of the ones with the cooling elements exposed on the inside top of the fridge compartment. I had just washed off some dishes and my hands were wet as I reached into the fridge. I was stretching past a pile of leftover grilled cheese sandwiches and got stuck to the cooling element! Yes, my left index, middle, and ring fingers all were stuck to the inside of the fridge. All I could think of (past the mounds of pain I was experiencing) was the scene from A Christmas Story when the kid was sticking his tongue to the frozen telephone pole...I yelled to Kelley and Phil, Phil thought I was joking so he didn't do anything. Kelley came in, took a look, grabbed the spray bottle with bleach water in it, and sprayed me free! My index finger is almost completely free of any burn, but my middle and ring fingers look like I grilled them. I'll take a picture and post it later. I got a blood blister and anther normal blister and some nasty scabs/soon to be scars. The moral of the story is: look out for your cooling elements next time you reach into the fridge.

Small Town 4th of July Celebrations
In all of the McDermitt, NV, 4th of July weekend festivities, there is a rodeo on Saturday followed by a round of carnival games for the kiddies and later by a dance/block party for the adults. We walked the fifth of a mile to the Say When Casino to get dinner and were stopped by some of the locals who were sitting on the outside deck of the bar in town. They promptly informed us that it didn't really matter what age we were and that we were all welcome to join the jello shot competition when it came time. We are pretty sure that all but one or two of the people out there were quite snookered, as they made some inappropriate comments towards us ladies. We politely excuse ourselves to dinner, and enjoy a meal. We decide to walk back to our school afterwards, hang out for an hour, then go to the dance. Cowboys, country music, broken bottles, and booze. They had it all! The same drunk local kept hitting on us, and unfortunately he had been one of the ones at the bar earlier. He was asking all the girls in the group for their "dance cards," especially "the one with the glasses." Unfortunately, I am the only one who wears the glasses. Quickly I sat down on the curb with Mallory and mumbled some lame excuse. After about the twelfth time getting rejected, he finally left me alone. Moral of the story: Stay with friends and come up with a lame excuse when drunk men hit on you.

The Water in McDermitt, NV
Oh, the water. We got a notice from the school secretary Wednesday night at 7.30 that the water in the McDermitt watershed had been tested and found with traces of ecoli bacteria. SAY WHAT?!? It was a "suggested boil order," saying that all water that was to be used for cooking, drinking, and washing dishes needed to be boiled for a minute before use. What a stress! We took all the camper's cups and shoved them in our dish sanitizer as fast as we could without them seeing it. We told their leaders as soon as we got into the staff/counselor meeting at nine, plan in hand. We told them everything we knew, but refrained telling the campers that it was specifically ecoli. We had a somewhat melodramatic and hypochondriac group this week, so we felt that just telling them that it was a bacteria would be enough information. Their counselors were sent home with notices to inform the parents exactly what it was, what we did, etc., so I guess they will find out sooner or later! This is what we did: our tribal contact had given us the key to the senior center on the reservation, and they are for one reason or another in a different watershed than we are. We took one of the trucks and filled it with all our water jugs to be filled up there. We were boiling water for people to brush their teeth with, as well as running all the dishes a second time through our sanitizer. Kelley and I were going to go to Winnemucca the next day on our grocery run, so they gave us $100 to buy bottled water. 25 flats of water later, we still haven't found out any updates on the water situation other than the fact they sent in a second sample and results will be in by Monday. So far nobody has gotten sick, but we still have four days left in the gestation period. Moral of the story: Don't drink the water...but do because we don't want you to get heat stroke.

Second Helpings at Meals
This week the campers were ferocious when it comes to eating seconds. We run it so that every camper and counselor has to go through the line. Then the staff team (that is me and my new friends) gets to grab their plates of food, and two stay behind to serve seconds. As the staff who aren't serving again walk to the tables, we all yell "SECONDS!" at the top of our voices. Every day this week we had people (including adult counselors) who would run to get to the food! Once I had to get out of the way of someone who was booking it back to the table. At our water day, we had people hanging in a pack, ready to rush/fight their way to get to the small amount of leftover potato salad and burgers. We were slightly frightened and asked them to stand a little further away. Yes, they ran when we yelled. Moral of the story: Maybe Kelley and I should stop making such good food. Then nobody will want first servings, much less seconds.

Leeches
At water day we encountered a few leeches in our swimming hole. The girls screamed, the boys just laughed and slapped them off. It wasn't all that many, only four, but still dramatic enough for some people to not get back in. When we got back to camp, we checked Wikipedia to see what exactly happens when you are bitten by a leech, only to find that it is basically harmless. They just suck enough blood (a teaspoon at most) to satisfy them, then fall off. The only thing you should not do when coming in contact with a leech is to try to "burn" it off. When a leech comes into contact with abnormal heat, it vomits the blood back into its victim along with some other nasty stuff and can create a mean infection. Moral of the story: Just let the leech do it's thing. All will be fine.

Sleep Deprivation
This is quite a normal occurrence at SSP, especially for the chefs. A bedtime for staff any earlier than eleven thirty is a luck thing indeed. Three times a week we get to wake up at 5.30 to start cooking breakfast. The other days we get to sleep in until 6.45, but we still need naps. Sometimes even a two hour nap barely holds me over until the sun slips down behind the horizon. Yesterday we had pancakes, overslept half an hour (woke up at 6 on accident), didn't get done with breakfast and dishes until nine. Then Phil and I made roughly 90 enchiladas for dinner and finished around 12. Ate lunch, then went to each of the camper's work sites and handed out the traditional Friday Otter Pops. Got back around 3, cleaned up the mess we made trying to roll the enchiladas. 3.45 rolls around, and I asked Mallory if I could sleep until 4.15, fifteen minutes into free time when we were to be hanging out with campers. She said it would be fine. I laid down, and napped...until 5.30 when Kelley woke me up because dinner was supposed to be on the table in 15 minutes. Thankfully she got the memo that the enchiladas were just sitting in the ovens and were ready to be cooked-they still turned out great. Moral of the story: sleep whenever you can and for as long as you can. It will soon be a commodity.

Three Times the Normal Amount of Asthma Medication*
*Don't worry Mom, this wasn't me. It was one of our hypochondriac campers.
We had one of the biggest hypochondriacs this week. She had a whole host of things that were wrong. She had Type 1 Diabetes, high blood pressure, and moderate asthma. On top of these things, she came from a very loving-deprived home, and desperately sought attention for any reason possible. Dale, her youth leader, told the staff that she pretends to be sick for attention, and she herself told one of our supply coordinators, Jennifer, that she loves being in the center of attention. Overreacting + attention deprived = bad combination. Either way, she was having a small bought of asthma and took her medication. When it did not work immediately, she decided to take another dose of her inhaler. When this one did not work, she took another. Three times her daily amount needed in less than an hour and a half. Her blood pressure and heart rate both skyrocketed and she had a small panic attack. We called the EMTs, but they were an hour away in Winnemucca. So Dale decided that it would be best to meet them halfway, transfer her into the ambulance, and have her other leader Ashley follow in the car. Ashely told us later that the ambulance driver told her to keep up. "Keeping up" meant 95 MPH! Well, she made it to the ambulance, to the hospital, calmed her down, got her heart rate and blood pressure down, and sent her on her merry way. Moral of the story: Don't overdose on your medication.

Tomorrow we are welcoming our last week of campers for the summer! Hopefully this group won't have a need for our friendly neighborhood EMTs like the last two.

Theme Days, Invisible Co-Chefs, and Miracle Food

So our first week is almost officially over. Its both a good and a sad thing. We all are definitely ready for a break and lots of time to catch up on lost sleep, but these campers have been so good we just don't want them to leave!

So what is with the title? Let me tell you! We've decided that in order to spice things up, we will have "theme days." We are still throwing around a few ideas for some of them, so if you have suggestions, feel free to comment! We have Musical Mondays, where campers have to get into their work (site specific) groups and report on what happened during the day-in the form of a musical. This is performed after dinner during our night time program. Tuesdays we haven't quite figured out yet. Wednesdays are "Would You Rather" days, where you ask things like "Would you rather have the arms of an ape or have a unicorn horn sticking out of your forehead?" Thursdays are knock-knock jokes, and then Fridays are traditionally where staffers (and those campers who know or remember) wear a yellow shirt. But this summer our staff has come up with not-joke Fridays. This is somewhat sarcastic but can be quite funny. So someone can say to me, "Tamsen, I though dinner was lame tonight...NOT!" Don't be disappointed, it is much better live than when it is read.

Something else that we have discovered is that many people don't realize that my co-chef Kelley exists! She has been forgotten or called Katie many times this week, both in smaller groups and in the larger group as a whole! So we were joking around that I actually steal all the glory and put her to work doing the dishes in the back room. Then we decided that for the next group of campers who come in, she will wear a shirt that says, "I'm Kelley, NOT Katie." We may or may not actually make her one, but it would be quite funny.

Miracle food, you ask? Some say it is. One afternoon while prepping dinner in the kitchen, one of the campers Eric came in to talk to Kelley and I. We were in there with our site director Mallory, and he poked his head inside to see if we both were there. He said, "The food has been so good this week. Its so healthy that it cured my acne!" Too bad the kid had perfect skin to start off with! His counselor told us yesterday that he also told her that it has had another pro: its made his bowel movements more regular. I guess that isn't necessarily something that we planned on, but if it keeps the customer satisfied, I think we are doing our job.

Here are some more pictures to enjoy!

This is an inside view of our kitchen: Katie on the left (she's our musician for the week), and Kelley on the right.

Some of our campers and staff on water day!


Scenery around the creek we swam in.

Shelley and Tracy-the leaders from Reno. Tracy is a real life-cowboy, boots, accent, ranch, and all!

So we did have a pop-up tent at water day-but it blew off the cliff and into the water! It didn't hurt anyone, but was very close to hitting Amy, Kelley and myself off the 20 foot ledge into the water! It flew right over our heads.

A picture from our after dinner hike. It was beautiful!

Elvis Has Entered the Building!

Okay, maybe Elvis hasn't re-joined us from the aliens yet. But the campers came last night and we didn't run away!
This week is our smallest so far, there are only 41 campers and counselors. Things have been going pretty smoothly so far. We have five vegetarians, one severe dairy allergy, and one vegan. We have been getting somewhat creative with their food, trying different egg substitutes and soy instead of real or powdered milk. They are out on chocolate chip cookies too, so we made the dough without the chips and added a hunk of peanut butter. Hopefully they aren't allergic to those too!
The campers have enjoyed our meals (which is always a blessing), but I think they might be dreading peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by the time they leave. It is the only option for lunch. Last night we had grilled cheese with tomato and chicken noodle soups, salad, bananas, and the SSP classic, Love! We have a team from LA and they asked me what was for dinner before we had started cooking. I told them that it was going to be "hecka good," and all four of them gasped and took a step back in fear. NO JOKE! They later told me that they were talking in the car ride up about all the NorCal stereotypes they were about to encounter. Glad I could be the first one to fulfill them!