Facing the Storm

On Tuesday, we all woke up extremely exhausted from our adventure the night before. As we begun our day, we discussed how it was totally worth it, swimming with the “glitter” was crazy fun and a great bonding experience. After breakfast, we started our hard work in preparation for the tropical storm quickly approaching. We broke off into groups with high spirits and open minds for the sake of God.

 

One of the jobs was staining the water slide at Camp Caribe. The large wooden structure was worked on all morning. The group was right next to the water and had a nice breeze coming through. Maggie said the job was pretty enjoyable. Some told me they really felt God’s presence in all the beauty surrounding them. Also, while we were doing our morning devotion and jobs, John, the camp director, was driving the youngest children around in the wagon some of us had painted yesterday. They were the image of pure joy and happiness. Having worked on the wagon, it really lifted my heart that they loved it so much. It was a nice distraction to have them ride around and wave at us, shouting greetings in our direction.

Another job taken on was cleaning up a little bit. From the projects constantly worked on across the camp, there were some materials still lying around. The people working on it had really positive attitudes and were happy to help. Seeing Claire and Holly joyfully agree to do whatever really inspired me. They seemed very much filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit.

 

The job I, personally, was working on was painting the roof. In all actuality, it wasn’t really paint- it was this rubbery stuff that would protect the roof from weather. Like the people who worked on it yesterday, we thought it was cool to see everything going on around us. God was definitely up there watching us and filling us with His presence. STONE Mason, the work belt champion (an award given to hard workers) was in our group and continued to be one of the hardest and eager workers. We all managed to have a lot of fun. It was definitely hot up there for the little while. The Caribbean sun showed no mercy! Just kidding, but I do remember taking a break and drinking two whole bottles of water. The breeze kept us cooled off as the day went on.

The last job worked on was filling in the hole some of us had dug yesterday. We were so lucky to have found the junction so the campers’ showers wouldn’t flood and sewage wouldn’t back up, but we still had to fill it up in order to be able to drive on the road we had found the junction on. The people working out there worked hard as always with big smiles on their faces. I really admired their optimism as they worked on what seemed like a very boring and hard job.

 

Lunch on Tuesday was very good. We had chicken tacos, nachos and bananas fresh off the vine. I don’t know about you, but I love bananas so that totally made my day. I think it distracted us from the heat a little bit. Jeremy successfully took hilarious creeper pics of Dayna, Jack, and Joe.

Let’s also take a moment to appreciate this gorgeous shot I just found of me.

We had just enough time after lunch to take a 20-minute siesta. Jack spent this time enlightening us with some tunes from a random guitar we found. I swear he carries that thing everywhere during free time, but the background music he plays is really super nice. He is in musician heaven. Maybe God put it there for him to enjoy the trip more? Who knows…

We went back to work for our afternoon ministry, but as soon as we were done, we ran and grabbed our bathing suits for our daily afternoon swim in the ocean. Someone took our orders for frappes and brought them right back to the camp. Therefore, we got to swim with our frappes! “It’s so tropical!” Sam exclaimed! Jeremy also brought out Aaron’s special shirt we found in a closet on last Tuesday’s service day. It is small, pink, and says “Angel” across the front. I’m sure we pretty much publicly humiliated him by making him wear it.

As a sidenote- some of the people who were also at the camp from North Carolina found a stray puppy. They didn’t want to leave it in the wilderness, so they found someone to adopt it! We were all oogling over it, especially Mason and Drew. We all think they’re half puppy themselves.

 

At dinner, we played a bunch of rhythmic games like sevens and the cup song we knew from camp and stuff like that. It was pretty fun teaching others how to do them and getting big groups to do it with us.

After dinner, we had about two hours until devotions to prepare for the storm. The ladies had

already prepared, so we got to do whatever. I personally read for a long time, but most of the group spent the time playing Gaga. I joined them for the last few minutes. It was a lot of fun.

Then came devotions. That was pretty powerful. We started out by singing some worship songs, and I felt myself really feeling God’s presence and love as we were all singing it as a group. Worship is personally one of my favorite things ever because through song, you can pretty much always see God. Then we did this exercise that really brought us together and was really kind of strange (in a good way). We got into groups of three with people we didn’t know very well and prayed with them for a few moments. Then we broke off and did some personal meditation. We asked God for words we could say to the people in our group from him to assure them of any worries or question they had that we didn’t previously know. We wrote them down on a card, and joined our small group once again. We placed the cards face down, shuffled them, and picked one. It was eerie how the card said exactly what we needed to hear from God. It really showed how important it is to listen to Him. It was interesting to discuss things on a deeper level and get to know people. We all left with a feeling of wonder of God’s awesomeness.

 

Our last big event of Tuesday was our late-night impromptu dance party. Asia and Tre were blasting Christian rap (not Toby Mac, legit rap) and it was probably the most fun thing ever. Sam and Jeremy have some awesome dance moves, but they weren’t the only ones breaking it down. Mason, Drew, and Hunter are some of the few who were totally into it. Aaron taught us his signature move and we were all soon replicating it (point, thrust, point, thrust). We were also joined by one of the girls from North Carolina who seemed to love our group. It was an awesome way to end the night.