June 1-6 Michi-Lu-Ca
Staff training was always my favorite. Camp for the counselors was a description I would often associate with those two weeks spent preparing for the summer, building a healthy community with the staff, and caring for God’s creation in anticipation of a full summer. My time at Michi-Lu-Ca and Stony Lake, two beautiful camps of Living Waters Ministry in northern and western Michigan respectively, was filled with the familiar, the new, and the love of God.
The familiar at Michi-Lu-Ca, among other things, was love. I found a group of young people full of fear and uncertainty, facing new relationships and transition, and unsure of what the summer, let alone the next year, holds in store for them. I stood in the midst of this tactile emotion, as I had so many times in the past, and saw love overtake the fear and uncertainty. I saw love become the foundation to new relationships and fill the staff with hope for the summer as well as their year and life beyond. Camp remains a place that changes people by God’s love.
"Interdigitize" was a new term and brilliant concept that I was gifted with at Michi-Lu-Ca. Interdigitizing happens when we hold hands. We interlock out fingers to show how other peoples strengths (represented by our fingers) cover our weaknesses (represented by the space between our fingers) and vice versa. This exemplifies the body of Christ in which we all bring something different in order to make up one body.
That is what I experience my first week at Michi-Lu-Ca. In the camping world, each camp is unique in special ways but each camp is also on one mission in one body: To go our and share the word through Christian community, love.
From Adam Berndt, Outdoor Ministry Ambassador (OMA)
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