Help! I'm a camp speaker! part 2

I started speaking on Monday evening, August 17th. Tuesday through Friday I spoke 3 times a day: briefly in the morning at staff devotions, later in the morning I would tell a story from the book of Daniel, then in the evening we talked about God's work in our own lives. The kids were very responsive, and I had fun getting them involved through acting out the story or chanting or just asking review questions. They were amazingly attentive and some of the cabin groups went back and read more! One cabin leader said his boys had become "Bible addicts." Fun!

On Thursday I spoke from Ephesians 2:10 about being God's Masterpiece. It fit with the week's theme of being ALIVE in Christ and that we couldn't have done that for ourselves. It also fit with something we were learning from Daniel: that God is the one who gives wisdom and greatness, and if we think we're good and powerful and self-made, we might enjoy ourselves temporarily but we're in for a big surprise later!

To explain God's Masterpiece, I used a series of pictures of the pottery process from my brother Jeffrey's website. There is absolutely nothing that clay can do to help itself become something wonderful. And it takes time and a lot of pushing and pulling and spinning for the clay to be shaped into some thing beautiful and/or useful. After shaping it sits on a shelf and dries for several days (or weeks, as with teapots). Then it needs extreme heat... twice! Along the way there's decoration, that doesn't look like much, but the potter knows! Finally, after a long, intense process, you have beautiful plates and platters, big and small and medium bowls, mugs and goblets, cream and sugars, pitchers and teapots, vases and candle-holders, casseroles and cookie jars, and more!!! Jeffrey has even done sculptures and space ships with stained glass windows!

On Friday evening, I did a mini-concert and talked about how each of us has a story and God is writing it. One of the cabin leaders asked if he could sing Fingerprints of God by Steven Curtis Chapman. It fit perfectly, so at the end of the chapel service he sang and I joined with some harmony on the choruses. It was a perfect ending. For cabin devotions after chapel, I challenged the cabin leaders to go around their whole cabins and tell each child one thing they've noticed about God's fingerprints on that child. The next morning in staff meeting many cabin leaders shared how well that went over. In one cabin it became an encouragement fest, with all the guys sharing good things about each other. In another cabin, after the leader was done the girls wanted to tell the leader about God's fingerprints on her! Sometimes we can be faithful to our calling and not get to see the fruit of what we do, but that was such a treat to hear about all that sharing.

At Saturday morning's closing rally, I recapped the week for the parents, explaining the Daniel stories and the masterpiece and fingerprints of God. Just 5 minutes. Amazing how I had to pray harder about those 5 minutes than the longer ones! The less time you have, the more it counts. Hmmmm.

The most challenging part of the day was climbing the big hill 3 times a day to the dining hall. I think my favourite part of the day was worship. During staff meetings we all agreed that this was our favourite--the energetic and heartfelt worship of 9-11 year olds. I loved seeing this one little guy in the aisle with his hand raised up.

For an album of photos from my week at Manitou, visit my Facebook profile.