Stress

     Being up at camp the past four days has been quite the experience. There's been great people involved in the flow of the camps, great pastors speaking for the students, and just great times shared with each other. One of the biggest things this week has taught me, though, is about stressing out, and putting your trust in God more than anything.

     I like knowing things. I like knowing when the band loads, what songs are going to be played, what time things will start, and who is going to be there. It's just natural. This week has definitely not helped me with knowing those things though. I never find out when the band loads until 30 seconds before we load. I don't know the songs for the morning session until I hear our worship leader start playing on stage as I wait to listen for the tempo. I don't know when session actually starts until I hear loud music thumping in the chapel. And I don't know who is who or who is doing what ever. As irritating as those things can be for me, I've learned to calm myself and let go of the unnecessary stress that it brings me. If no one else is worried about these things, why should I be? They've worked out in the past 3 days, so what's there to worry about? It's been quite a learning experience, especially two out of the four nights.

     The second evening here at camp there was an attack made by the Enemy. In the middle of our evening speakers sermon, the power in the entire camp went out. Not just one building or just the lights, the entire campus of UCYC was out of power, leaving us with just the lights on our phones. The attitude and actions of what this camp did was so incredible, they all pulled out their phones and flash lights, kept their flashes aimed at the ceiling, leaving enough light to see our speaker, and they all hushed up as the pastor continued with his sermon. It wasn't much longer that the power returned and everything went back to normal.

     Last night there was another attempt at an attack. During the beginning of the evening session at camp the main speakers in the building went out. They were all plugged in, power was working and things were all on, but they were not amplifying anything. This meant there was going to be no worship and that the speaker would, again, have no microphone. To solve this our worship leader stood in the middle of the crowd with his acoustic guitar and let the audience lead worship with just his guitar playing. While that was going on, some camp staff set up temporary speakers so that our speaker would have an amplified voice. After his sermon the worship leader was able to plug his guitar and a microphone into the amps so that he was somewhat amplified, and worship was finished.

     It was last night that students made first time decisions to follow Jesus.

     No matter the issues and the problems or the technical difficulties or all of the planning or orchestrated stage activities, God's plan never fails. What we had in mind was not what was going to happen, there were other plans.