Our Great God

First off, I just wanted to apologize for not blogging for a while, we have been extremely busy and I have honestly not had the time until today to sit down and write this.  We have less than 3 weeks of camp left and only have one day in between each camp.  Also, the interns are trying to spend as much time together as we can, so other than sleeping my 4-5 hours a night, and about 1 hour in the afternoon, I am not in my room unless I am hanging out with people.  This week Prairie Lakes Chuch in Cedar Falls/Osage/Waterloo brought a group down to BigStuf.  It is so exciting to see people from home and meet new people from the Cedar Valley that I didn't know before.  This week BigStuf splits up into two camps, one here in Panama City Beach with 1,500 students and a Conference at Daytona Beach with 3,500 students.  This means that our staff has to split up too, all of the core staff went to Daytona Beach and the people who were left here are the 17 interns, 2 intern leaders, 1 video director, 1 technical director, and 1 camp director.  Yep, that is 22 people running this camp, it is crazy!  So far, everything is going really well and there haven't been any major issues and anything that has happened, we have been able to handle it very well.  One of the biggest and most impactful nights is usually night four when there is extended worship, but last night was one of the best nights that we have had the whole summer! Jared Heard (the Speaker) asked students to stand up if they wanted to give their life to Christ, it was so amazing to see so many students stand up and then see the spirit lead as friends of the students prayed over them.  All of the interns heard so many stories of church group time being very intense and that God was doing great things.  I am excited for tonight which is the extended worship and I am excited to see how God is going to use tonight in the lives of the campers here.  Tonight I am on Camera 4, which is up on stage filming the drums, it will be a lot of fun to be on stage for tonights worship!

All my Fountains are in You

         Camp is starting again today after our week break, the first campers are already here and the question that was brought up to the intern team during our meeting today was “Are you ready”.   Scott Burks, the camp director had us all think about that question, are we ready for four more intense weeks of impacting the lives of over 5,000 students, are we ready to pour out everything that we have so that others can gain and the kingdom can be advanced, are we ready to do whatever it takes to make sure this camp runs flawlessly?   The easy answer that came to me was yes, that I am excited to be back in Panama City Beach at the Boardwalk Beach Resort with the people that I love, serving my King.  However, Scott brought up a great point, we have had a whole week off where we have gotten to rejuvenate and rest.  When we were in Atlanta for our week break the interns who were there went to Passion City Church and Northpoint Church, we had discussions of our faith and had heart to hearts, we got to have alone time with God and we really got poured into this past week.  It is easy to be here today and say that we are completely ready to take on these next four weeks because we have this adrenaline and energy of starting camp again, we have gotten more than enough sleep, and have had time to spend with God.  Scott said that we will be digging a well in our life and the well that we are digging needs to be in God and that we need to be dipping from God’s well not our own well.  We will not be fully renewed and alive if we are getting water from other wells such as family, friends, or even Christian speakers.  The only well that will help us to be fully renewed is from God and we need to spend time with him every day so we will not thirst or drink from the wrong well.  This brings me back to the title, while we were at Passion City church; they sang the song “All my Fountains” by Chris Tomlin.  It says:

Open the heavens
Come Living Water
All my fountains are in You
You're strong like a river
Your love is running through
All my fountains are in You

All of the interns became obsessed with this song and it is not a coincidence that this is what Scott touched on this morning.  I know that these next four weeks are going to be physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually exhausting but I know that the only way I am going to make it through is by leaning on God to give me the strength and endurance I need. 

           Like I talked about, we had a week off in Atlanta, it was so much fun to relax and get to know the interns who were there a lot better.  We stayed at Logan Mcelroy’s house, (fun fact: He was Fuzzy in the movie Rebound.  No joke. He signed a movie poster for me! )   Logan was an intern last year and is on staff doing lights this year, he is such a great friend!  His family is awesome; we ate the best food that we have eaten all summer.  The Boardwalk Beach Resort is definitely NOT known for their great food, that’s for sure.  We went to a Gwinnette Braves and Durham Bulls Triple A Baseball game, it was so much fun to be at a ballpark again!  It made me miss my family being there, because we always go to baseball games together, it also made me think of them because of the movie Bull Durham and of course when I told my brother, he sent me back a text with a movie quote which is not really appropriate to put on my blog.  Speaking of Jacob, I got to talk to him on the phone for the first time since May 16^th.  It was really fun to talk to him and yes, I am admitting this, I miss him and can’t wait to see him in August.    As long as I am admitting things, I am sad to say that I used the word y’all without realizing it at 4:30 in the morning, thanks to Alexa Behar’s picture message of me sleeping.  It is quite sad that I am falling into their trap, no worries I still say ‘pop’ and I say ‘roof’ and ‘root’ correctly!  (I never knew that there was another way to say those two words!)  On a more serious note, our team is really excited to be back here and ready to start.  Please be praying for all of us to make Konnektions with students that impact their life. 

Northern Girl turned South.

There has been a tradition of BigStuf interns moving to Atlanta at some point in their life after the internship is over.  I never thought I would fall into that trap, but yesterday may have changed my opinion on that, despite being made fun of for saying "pop, roof, root, and swoosh".  Seven of the interns are in Atlanta for our week break and it has been so relaxing.  Yesterday, we went to Passion City Church in Atlanta and the pastor of that church is Louie Giglio and worship is led by Chris Tomlin.  It was the most amazing church service that I have ever been to.  The Holy Spirt was really moving and all of us were so uplifted by it.  Because of this all of the female interns who are in Atlanta for the week, (Alexa, Courtney, Kelsey, Emily, and me) decided we are moving to Atlanta.  A few of them will be moving here within the next year or two, unfortunately I have about 4 more years of school..as of now I think God is calling me to be at UNI, but who knows in the future.  I, like a majority of the Christians in the world have heard the verse John 3:16 so many times in their life, that they probably don't think about what it actually means.  Louie talked about that verse yesterday and opened my eyes to what it is really saying.  God didn't just love the world, he SO loved the world and that if we believe in Him we won't perish, everybody dies, but if we believe in Him we won't perish but get to spend eternity with Jesus. 
Last week at camp was an amazing week, I really connected with a church from Pineville, Louisiana.  I got to know a lot of the girls and hung out with them unil 1:00 AM one night.  It was a lot of fun to get to know all of them!  All of us were extremely exhausted last week from having our fourth week of camp, so this break that we have now is very much needed.  I have had time to think about what I have learned and what I am going to change for the next half of the summer. I am really going to try to live in the now and not think about what is going to be happening.  I have learned that when you think about this moment, life slows down and you can enjoy every moment.  That is definitely what I need for the next half of the summer, because August 5th is going to come soon enough and then I will have to be split up from my BigStuf family.