steeped in prayer.

[i began this post on february 18th. i was reminded of and ordered to finish this post on february 29th. and i am going to finish it today, which for the record is march 14th.]
[i didn't finish it that day. today, april 4th, i really will!]
i'm getting a head start on this summer.
i've said before that when i miss a person really bad, i pray for them. it helps me not miss them so much and puts my missing feeling to good use.
i've missed camp worse than ever this year. the way i see it, there are only two seasons: summer, and not-summer. and my summer doesn't start and end when school does; it starts whenever i get to camp and ends when i leave for the last time.
it's been a very long, very hard not-summer. and it's not even close to over yet.
anyways i decided to do the same thing with camp as i do with people that i miss. i'm gonna start praying for it extra early this year.
i've been thinking a lot about new staff. whether the ones that are currently applying, the ones still considering it, or those that haven't even though about it yet but God is fixing to call them to it. the little high schoolers who are finally old enough to be like their cabin leaders.
of course there are a certain few old ones who i'm praying God gives a great big push back in the right direction...they know who they are. they are GOING to end up coming back. ; )
but mostly the new ones. we need a lot of them. camp with only 27 staff just doesn't work. i mean, we made it work, but with 32 at the least, you don't have to MAKE it work, it just works. when i was little i remember the brochures used to say "camp is staffed with 38 college aged women..." 38??? we didn't even have that many my first year, and that was back in the days of almost every week being mostly full.
anyways.
i want this summer to be all about prayer.
prayer for each other. for strength, unity, patience, and drama-freeness.
for our campers.
and for ourselves. i'm sure i'm not the only one who gets so pulled into taking care of other people(that is, after all, what we're getting paid for) that i forget to take care of myself. i'm really really challenging myself this year to be more consistent with my own quiet times, and i want to encourage all of yall to do the same! the difference it makes is crazy.
basically, i want us to be 1 thessalonians 5:17ing all summer long. i've had the best feeling about this summer since like december, and i just know God has absolutely infreakingcredible things in store for us. but we need to get started praying!
here's some ideas:
1. me and kathleen were talking, a week after i started this post, about how powerful prayer is, how we underestimate it so much. we decided to pray for God to bring 1500 campers and 30 staff. as of today(april 4th) we have 28 staff! so close! and we have 500 campers, but registration only started like a month ago. we'll be getting a lot more. keep praying, i know they're coming!
2. new staff. for peace(bless their hearts it's so scary! we all were there once. now there really isn't much reason to be terrified, but they're all gonna feel that way at some point), for quick adjusting, and for them to be just as awesome as all newbies always are. =]
3. old staff. that we'd be good examples and big helps to the new ones and that we'd continue to encourage each other.
4. staff unity in general. i know it will never totally be this way, but let's dream big and pray for a drama-free summer!
5. for the campers. new and old.
6. for cindy as she chooses staff and gets other things together. she may not be in the hot sun with 12 campers hanging on her all day but you can't say she doesn't have the most stressful job of all of us.

that's all i can think of for now...ready, set, get on your knees! figuratively of course. =] God has such a big summer planned!!!

a post within a post: relationship vs leadership/why i love my track group.

some people are relationship-y. others are leadership-y.
everyone is a mix of both; no one is strictly one or the other. like the myers-briggs scale. you need to be both, you just prefer one over the other(though some people really are straight down the middle).
now in some cases, one is better or more important than the other.
but at camp, both are equally important.
unit leaders are the most leadershipy. and either cabin leaders or CITs are the most relationship-y...i guess cits. cabin leader does have LEADER right in the name.
in anything, i'll always pick the relationship-y side. even in little things like working in the caf; i'd way rather work the sub bar, where i can talk to people while i fix their food and watch people when there's no line, than be stuck in the kitchen doing food prep.
at camp, there is no way that i will ever be a unit leader. partly because i'm unorganized, freeze when i spend too much time in air conditioned spaces, and hate answering the phone, but mostly because my favorite thing about camp is being with the girls. talking to them, laughing with them, watching them become friends with each other, loving them, pouring into them, hearing their stories, just living life with them for a week. i'm not saying that unit leaders love the campers less than i do, just that i'm better at getting to know them than i am at leading and organizing things for them.
some people come to camp on one extreme, and as the summer goes on, i love watching them grow in the other side. for instance, i've seen crazy uptight leader types learn to chill out and have fun, and crazy fun ones become stronger leaders.
even though i've come into my own a lot more on the leader side, i'll always be a bigger fan of the relationship-y parts of camp.
that's why adventure rec has always been my track group choice, every year both as a camper and a staffer.
quick side note for those unrelated to la vida: a track group is a set of activities that the girls get to choose from, and they get to do that every day. there are five of them. adventure rec is all about team building, super fun games, and the low ropes course.
it involves everything that i love and everything i'm good at. it's all outside, you're always doing active things, and you make close friends with everyone in your group. 
from day one, the biggest rules are 1. always have fun, and 2. always be positive. whether we're playing games, doing trust exercises, or working through one of the elements, everyone is encouraging to everyone else. especially the staffers; we make every girl feel special, even the shyest or least athletic ones. that in itself was half of why i loved it as a camper. and while i've never been much of a debbie downer even as a little kid, i think the ropes course is where i really learned how to encourage people, and determine to make life fun no matter how much it sucks.
day one is all about getting to know each other. we play name games(that involve moving, not just a sit down and say your name and two fun facts about yourself), and then once everyone knows everyone, we go into other ones(mostly different versions of tag. did you know there was more than one? i probably know about twenty).
day two is more games, this time ones that make you work together and learn to trust your group. and we teach them how to spot, so they won't die on the ropes course the next day.(calm down. there's nothing they could actually die on. just moderately injured. and if that's a strong possibility due to the group goofing off too much, we don't let them on it)
day three and four are spent in the woods. every element makes you cooperate with and trust the people around you, and you can learn a lot about someone by watching how they act as you go through each challenge. ps, it's not an obstacle course. it's nine different challenges, five of which don't involve ropes.
adventure rec is what sparked my love of debriefing things. it taught me to see Jesus in everything, to take ordinary things and relate them to life. see, when you finish each element, the staffers have their group talk about what they did. (what was hard about this? what was easy? what did you learn from it? how is this like life? what can you understand about God from this?) different age groups come up with different things. it's amazing what they can think of. every week i have a kid surprise me. i think this is the most important part of what we do. taking every chance we have to squeeze a little more Jesus out of camp. and it's possible with every track group.
as a camper, when it came time to debrief, i was always the one with all the ideas. a lot of times my staffer would have to say "okay, so someone...besides linda...tell me how this is like our walk with God." so coming back as a staffer i hadn't expected to hear much that had never been said before. but i've learned so much from my campers. i get really excited when someone says a totally original idea. that's only happened twice, but both times i was jumping around and laughing.
as the week goes on, i try to learn something about each girl in my group. i love that we have canteen during track group time now, because i never used to have much time to just talk to my kids unless they were in my unit. this way i get to know them even better.
and as i said earlier, i LOVE to help them make friends. here more than any other, they have to get close in order for anything to work. all during the week the girls bond more and more, start working together better, and at the end of the week they've got all these friends that aren't even in their cabin or unit.
not every camper, and definitely not every staffer(we're always the ones begging for help) is into all or any of that, and that's of course okay. but for me it's perfect. and i can get anyone to have fun with it, if for no other reason than the fact that i'm so excited about everything we do. i love everything about it, and when they see that, they want to try everything that much more(you can do that with anything. i'm sure chi chi got the girls in creative arts having twice as much fun).

the best way to celebrate leap day/why do i talk about camp so much?

today i got to go to a church and do a promo for camp. i saw some of my old campers, we sang the songs we've missed so much(ha. ha...okay i have missed them a little bit), and we got them all excited for the summer.
i love my campers. and i love hearing that they're still friends with each other; one of mine from my favorite week of all time told me all excited like that she emailed this other girl in our cabin all the time and they were planning to come the same week again. i made so many great friends as a camper, and i try really hard to help them do the same now, so it makes me happy to see them keeping in touch.
and it's adorable how some of them think camp works. if someone isn't coming back this summer, they freak out and think something terrible happened. or they're shocked when we don't know what cabin we'll be in this summer. they're so innocent and i love it.
i really miss being around little kids. i need more of them in my life; people my own age get taxing after a while.
people outside of camp get bored and sometimes even annoyed with my camp stories. i try to keep shut up about it to them but apparently i still talk too much.
but how is my loving camp and wanting to share it with people such a bad thing? when missionaries go on furlough, does anyone yell at them for being excited about their work, missing it, and wanting to go back to it? no. that would be a total jerk move.
so why, then, is it okay to try to discourage me from counting down the days, wishing i could be with my friends on staff, sometimes putting off homework a tiny bit to have a skype date, and planning months ahead for the summer?
it isn't okay. leave me alone. people like that make me want to go back to camp even worse, so i can be with people who understand it.
camp is not an idol in my life; it's because of God that i love it so much and talk about it all the time. if God told me to go somewhere else, i'd do it. i don't assume it's where he wants me; i KNOW it's where he wants me, because he constantly confirms it. i ask him a lot if it's still what he wants. i'm totally open to other possibilities; just because my first choice happens to be what he wants doesn't mean i'm taking over God's plan or jumping to unbiblical conclusions.
God is my life, camp just happens to be the biggest part of that life. so if i ever say "camp is my life", calm down. that's all i mean by it.
*steps off soap box*
satan is trying so hard to get to me and it's only february. you know what that means? this is gonna be an awesome summer. =]

mondays.

at my school "a case of the mondays" is a good thing. most of us don't have class, so it means a day to catch up on homework before a busy week starts, or just relax.
but at camp, it's the best thing ever.
you wake up to a whole new week, and an empty cabin that will soon be full of brand new campers.
you go to breakfast and everybody's in their staff shirts and everybody's all excited.
you walk out and there are almost always one or more campers(i've worked about 50 camps and i can only remember once or twice where there were no early arrivers).
then the whole day is just full of happy things, new and old. new campers. new missionaries. old campers showing up here and there. the longer you work here, the more exciting mondays become, because more and more returning campers will recognize you(though that has a negative side: it's hard to remember that many. and not all of them were in your cabin, so some you may not even know at all!). everywhere you go, you run into a familiar face. mondays are FULL of hugs.
plus it's chicken finger night! everything is just the best.
i love mondays. i miss them. i want one right now.

#3wordstodescribeme

that's the top trending topic on twitter right now. whenever anyone asks me that, i think of my very first camp la vida interview.
and when i saw that today, and thought that, i realized that it's pretty close to the anniversary of that day. i thought for a second about waiting until then to write this, but then #3wordstodescribeme probably wouldn't be trending anymore so the post wouldn't make sense.
february 18, 2008. i was scared out of my mind, heart beating so fast i can only remember feeling that close to a heart attack two other times in my life, and wondering how i could possibly convince this unknown, scary woman that i deserved to work at her camp.
and i thought, not even thinking to pray for it to happen or wondering at all if it really would, that i really wished i could talk to elizabeth teal right then. i would feel so much better, and she would tell me how great i was, and she gives the best hugs in the world(for real. no one i've met since has beaten her yet).
me and my mom get there, and i'm contemplating telling her to wait in the car, but like the dentist's office, this just felt like one of those places where i'd have a nervous breakdown if i didn't have my mom walk me in. i tell the receptionist or whatever you'd call her that i'm here to see cindy skelton. she says she's with someone, points me to a chair, but i was too nervous to sit down, so as i do in any unfamiliar room, i gravitated to the bookshelves, and read the GA magazines until i heard people coming.
and i look up to see my at-the-time favorite person in the whole entire world, my hero, the person i most wanted and needed to see at that moment, walking out with cindy.
for once in my life, she had to come give me a hug first. i was too busy standing with my mouth open. and even once i broke out of my thoughts and started talking, i think i was still too nervous about everything else to be totally myself, because i don't remember talking very much or very fast, or jumping around at all.
i do remember asking her to cheat for me and tell me some of the questions cindy would ask, and i especially remember her asking, first thing after the initial yay-hi-allthehugs-howareyou-omgimissedyou, what i was there for. and i thought, duh, i'm applying to be you, silly. we've talked about this since i was thirteen?
the room i interviewed in was way bigger than i felt was necessary for just two people; it adds to the scare factor. it was this big conference room type thing, just like what you see in movies where people work in offices. i remember there being an echo...but it may have just seemed like that to me. i felt after every single question like i was bombing it, and i kept thinking, she hired all the crazy people you love, so it shouldn't be an issue if you actually talk and be yourself. but i couldn't.*
now when i asked elizabeth what cindy would ask me, she gave me a general idea but couldn't remember any specific questions, except for, you guessed it: the three words one.
yet when that came up, it took me a while to think of them. but i finally answered loud, happy, and fun.
she gave me a look that over the years i've probably seen a hundred times. it's kind of, surprised, but not in a bad way, skeptical but not in a negative way. it's not a bad look; it actually makes me laugh. i get it when i say things like "i never need to take a break" or "can i pleeeeease clean the dining hall since i'm not a cabin leader this week?" or if i volunteer to run to unit 3 and get the craft stuff when it's 99 degrees out.
anyways. due to my nervous as all get out demeanor, i can see why she'd need some convincing that i'm not a shy little introvert who would hate skit night.
annnnnd you know the rest of the story. i obviously got the job(the letter came on the 29th, which is a special day anyways since it only comes around every 4 years, but now it's one of my favorite days in my whole life. i was as proud of that letter as if it had come from hogwarts on my 11th birthday), and i love cindy. i can make her laugh now. (it's a sign of my being totally comfortable around you if i can make you laugh, that means i'm being myself, and myself is hilarious)
around this time of year, there are new people like 16-year-old me going through the same thing. i should pray for them.

*looking back, i think it was mostly scary because i had assumed for three years that i would someday be working there. now that i was looking the opportunity straight on, knowing it was possible that i might not get that, i had no idea what i would do if that happened. i had no alternative. my whole life was built around the idea that camp would one day BE my life. now, it's even better than i imagined. because camp isn't the center of my life; it's the center of where God wants me, but if he put me somewhere else, i'd be okay.(i mean i'd complain a LOT at first, and i'd doubt it for a good while before finally going along with it, but eventually i'd be okay. i wouldn't be lost and borderline suicidal or anything)

I FOUND MY FAVORITE OLD CAMP SONG EVER!!!!!!!!!!!

i have been trying for YEARS to remember this song. all i could remember of it was "and that's why i'm bananas for the lord". we sang it my first two years as a camper and then it just phased out. but i LOVE this song. there were really fun motions that you do with a partner, which i can't remember, but here are the words. i can't believe i never thought to google it until today.

(sung to the tune of the battle hymn of the republic)
He’s a peach of a savior; He’s the apple of my eye
He prunes away my branches, when my branches get too high
He bears the fruit of the season, for his love will never die
And that’s why I’m bananas for the Lord!
Glory, Glory we’re the branches
Glory, Glory we’re the branches
Glory, Glory we’re the branches
And that’s why I’m bananas for the Lord!

let it go.

while writing that last post, i had my itunes shuffling, and this song by the newsboys came up. and as i was typing but not really listening to the song, this line stuck out.

the darkness laughs as the wound destroys, and it turns your prayers to noise.

it's the hardest when the person you have to forgive is yourself.
if i wrote down all my thoughts, i would be rehashing this. so i won't do that.