Wrapping Up The Week-End At Pine Cove

Some observations from my weekend with 135 middle schoolers, adults and 13 high schoolers at Pine Cove Christian Camp this weekend:

Drizzle does not even come close to stopping a weekend designed for fun.

Pine Cove is so much fun that people will drive 5 hours to serve for nothing on the weekend.

Any live skit is funnier when the improvisation is forced and happening.

Sometimes a change of scenery is just what the doctor ordered, for the kids and for me.

Teenagers are fully capable of functioning, and even thriving without television or video games.

Teenagers are not capable of functioning without their own idea good music (which varies along with other strata of society) or, apparently, cell phones. They all have those.

The two biggest events for the middle schoolers were "crud wars" in which they threw shaving cream, flour, oats and maple syrup on each other (after being given advice to bring goggles and given instruction on how to prepare not to get this stuff permanently in their hair or in their ears) and "commando" (a game played in the dark in the woods with teens trying to avoid adults trying to stop them from getting points at a base in the middle of the woods). Kids really don't need modern forms of entertainment to have a good time. Smiles and laughs abounded after both.

Bus drivers can really make good time. Van drivers not so much.

There is still something mystical and magical about why a 13-year-old kid would value anything I say...much less seek me out to tell me things. I'm literally three times their age.

The pop-culture savvy of high schoolers in my area is staggering.

Christ works in the strangest ways in my life.

Christ works in the strangest ways in our ministry at CBC.

I should arrange for other teachers in all our classes on this Sunday next year. It's tough to teach after a long weekend like this. I imagine Nathan would agree.

Middle schoolers have an incredible energy level that drops hard once they sit down and after they unload all the fun description of the weekend to their parents. On the other hand, I tend to get tired in the moment, and now I have incredible amounts of energy at this time of night. Circadian rythyms are peculiar.

Some of the teens I discipled are incredibly gifted ministers to middle schoolers now that they're in college.

I'm glad Pine Cove exists and that so many middle schoolers now have some great life-long memories. I'm glad I was a very small part of it, too.